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maynard's 
English • Classic • Series 




BY 
eToriN ROSKIN 



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ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES, 

FOR 

Classes in English Literature, Reading, Grammar, etc. 

EDITED BY EMINENT ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SCHOLARS. 

Each Volume contains a Sketch of the Author's Life, Prefatory and 
Explanatory Notes, etc., etc. 



Byron's Prophecy of Dante. 

(Cantos I. and II.) 
Milton's L' Allegro, and II Pen- 

seroso. 
Lord Bacon's Essays, Civil and 

Moral. (Selected.) 
Byron's Prisoner of Chillon. 
Moore's Fire "Worshippers. 

(Lalla Rookh. Selected.) 
Goldsmith's Deserted Village. 
Scott's Marmion. (Selections 

from Canto VI.) 
Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel. 

(Introduction and Canto I.) 
Burns'sCotter'sSaturday Night, 

and other Poems 
Crabbe's The Village. 
Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. 

(Abridgment of Part I.) 
Macaulay's Essay on Bunyan's 

Pilgrim's Progress. 
Macaulay's Armada, and other 

Poems. 
Shakespeare's Merchant of Ve- 
nice. (Selections from Acts I., 

in., and IV.) 
Goldsmith's Traveller. 
Hogg's Queen's Wake, andKil- 

meny. 
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 
Addison's Sir Roger de Cover- 
ley. 
Gray's Elegy in a Country 

Churchyard. 
Scott's Lady of the Lake. (Canto 



I.) 
Shakespeare's As You Like It, 

etc. (Selections.) 
Shakespeare's King John, and 

Bichard II. (Selections.) 
Shakespeare's Henry IV., Hen- 
ry V., Henry VI. (Selections.) 
Shakespeare's Henry VIII., and 

Julius Caesar. (Selections.) 
Wordsworth's Excursion. (Bk.I.) 
Pope's Essay on Criticism. 
Spenser'sFaerieQueene. (Cantos 

I. and II.) 
Cowper's Task. (Book I.) 
Milton's Comus. 
Tennyson's Enoch Arden, The 

Lotus Eaters, Ulysses, and 

Tithonus. 



31 Irving's Sketch Book. (Selec- 
tions.) 

32 Dickens's Christmas Carol,. 
(Condensed.) 

33 Carlyle's Hero as a Prophet. 

34 Macaulay's Warren Hastings. 
(Condensed.) 

35 Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake- 
field. (Condensed.) 

36 Tennyson's The Two Voices., 
and A Dream of Fair Women. 

37 Memory Quotations. 

38 Cavalier Poets. 

39 Dryden's Alexander's, Feast, 
and MacFlecknoe. 

40 Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes. 

41 Irving.'s Legend of Sleepy Hol- 
low. 

42 Lamb's Tales from Shake- 
speare. 

43 Le Row's How to Teach Read- 
ing. 

44 Webster's Bunker Hill Ora-| 
tions. 

45 The Academy Orthoepist. A 
Manual of Pronunciation. 

46 Milton's Lycidas, and Hymn 
on the Nativity. 

47 Bryant's Thanatopsis, and other 
Poems. 

48 Buskin's Modern Painters* 
(Selections.) 

49 The Shakespeare Speaker. 

50 Thackeray's Roundabout Pa- 
pers. 

51 Webster's Oration on Adams 
and Jefferson. 

52 Brown's Rab and his Friends. 

53 Morris's Life and Death of 
Jason. 

54 Burke's Speech OH American 
Taxation. 

55 Pope's Rape of the Lock. 

56 Tennyson's Elaine. 

57 Tennyson's In Memoriam. 

58 Church's Story of the ^Eneid. 

59 Church's Story of the Iliad. 

60 Swift's Gulliver's Voyage to 
Lilliput. 

61 Macaulay's Essay on Lord Ba- 
con. (Condensed.) 

62 The Alcestis of Euripides. Em j- 
lish Version by Rev. R. Potter.M.ii. I 

(Additional numbers on next page.) 



MAYNARD'S ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES No. 176. 



SESAME AND LILIES 



FIRST LECTURE 



Of Kings' Treasuries 



JOHN RUSKIN 



WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, CRITICAL OPINIONS AND 
NOTES 




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Kellogg & Reed's The English Language. 
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Kellogg's Text-Book on English Literature. 



In the preparation of this series the authors have had one object 
clearly in view — to so develop the study of the English language as 
to present a complete, progressive course, from the Spelling-Book to 
the study of English Literature. The troublesome contradictions 
which arise in using books arranged by different authors on these 
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room, will be avoided by the use of the above " Complete Course." 

Teachers are earnestly invited to examine these books. 

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Copyright, 1895, by Maynard, Merrill, & Co. 



Introduction. 



John Ruskin was born in London, in 1819. His father was a 
prosperous wine-merchant, who spent his leisure hours in the 
study of art and the exercise of the pencil and brush. His early 
education was conducted by his mother, a woman of unusual 
culture, possessing a refined taste in literature. This maternal 
^tuition was almost puritanic in its severity. In addition to 
daily reading from such books as Pope's "Homer," Scott's 
"Xovels," and "Pilgrim's Progress," he was forced, he tells us, 
"by steady, patient, daily toil, to learn long chapters of the 
Bible by heart, as well as to read it every syllable through, aloud, 
hard names and all, from Genesis to the Af)ocalypse, about 
once every year ; and to that discipline, patient, accurate, and re- 
solute, I owe, not only a knowledge of the book I find occasion- 
ally serviceable, but much of my general power of taking pains, 
and the best part of my taste in literature," By such discipline 
in the knowledge of the Scriptures "she established my soul in 
life," he says, and he regards it as "the most precious, and, on 
the whole, the one essential part of my education." From the 
training of his mother he passed to the school of the Rev. 
Thomas Dale, and thence to Christ Church, Oxford. 

It was the father of John Ruskin, however, who bestowed and 
cultivated those artistic impulses which became the formative 
principles of his life. The " power of hills " was early upon him, 
and the most vivid impressions of his childhood, he tells us, 
were of the beautiful in nature and art. He was in the habit of 
accompanying his father in his business journeyings to various 
parts of the kingdom, and thus became familiar with much of 
the choicest English scenery, as well as with the art treasures 
of all the famed halls and galleries. "In all mountain ground 
and scenery, I had a pleasure, as early as I can remember," he 
says. When three years and a half old, being asked by the artist 
who was painting his portrait what he would like for the back- 
ground, he replied, "blue hills." The care and excellence of 
his father's instruction in matters of taste is attested by a signi- 
ficant fact: "he never," says Ruskin, "allowed me to look at a 
bad picture." After leaving Oxford he studied drawing and 
painting under J. D. Harding and Copley Fielding, and his 
work gave promise of eminence as an original artist. But it 
was as a prophet of painting, not as a painter, that Ruskin was to 
reveal himself to men. 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

Ruskin's first contribution to literature was in the form of 
poetry. As early as his ninth year he was writing tolerable 
verses, and while at Oxford he won the Newdigate Prize for 
English Poetry. A collection of these youthful poems was pub- 
lished in 1850, entitled "Poems. J. R." But this, like his work 
in painting, was aside from the true purpose of his genius, and 
simply indicative of qualities which were to characterize his 
future achievements. It is said that a copy of Rogers' " Italy," 
illustrated by the famous landscape painter, J. M. W. Turner, 
which had been presented to him by his father's business part- 
ner, determined Ruskin's career. By this he was led to study, 
to admire, and with advancing years, to comprehend the pur- 
poses of the great artist, who had fallen under the ban of the 
English critics for boldly introducing certain new ideas and 
methods into landscape art. Indignant at the "shallow and 
false criticism of the periodicals of the day on the works of this 
great living artist," he determined to write in his defense, and 
in 1843 the first volume of his masterly vindication appeared, 
with the title, ' ' Modern Painters : their Superiority in the art of 
Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters. By a Graduate 
of Oxford." Thus at the age of twenty-four, Ruskin challenged 
the verdict of his age, defied the critics, and denied the validity 
of principles established for four hundred years. The book was 
received with contempt and derision. But a new edition was 
issued the following year, and two years later a second volume 
appeared, with which his victory was assured. The third and 
fourth volumes appeared in 1856 ; the fifth and last in 1860. But 
long before the appearance of these last volumes he had practi- 
cally achieved the main objects with which he began his work, 
namely, "to vindicate Turner and to purify the public taste." 

Ruskin's other works have added much to his usefulness, but 
little to the reputation established by the first three volumes of 
"Modern Painters," — a work which, says Leslie Stephen, "has 
done more than any other of its kind to stimulate thought and 
disperse antiquated fallacies." While preparing the materials 
for the successive volumes of " Modern Painters," he gave to the 
public two other works which alone would have placed him at 
the head of his age as an art critic, "The Seven Lamps of Archi- 
tecture," published in 1849, and "The Stones of Venice," in 1851 
-1853. Some of the more important of his other works are " The 
Political Economy of Art;" "Unto this Last," essays on Politi- 
cal Economy; "Crown of Wild Olives," lectures on social 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

topics; "Sheep-Folds," a discussion of Church doctrine and 
discipline; "The Queen of the Air," lectures on Greek myths; 
several volumes of "Lectures," upon architecture, drawing, and 
painting; and "Fors Clavigera," a series of letters to working 
men, still in course of publication. 

It is a tenet of Rus kin's art philosophy that the principles 
fundamental to art are fundamental to all true life, and there- 
fore applicable to every department of social progress. This 
fact explains the wide and, in some respects, chimerical depart- 
ure from his original field, which has caused him to be some- 
what discredited as a thinker upon other subjects than those 
directly pertaining to art. But the essential soundness of his 
theories will hardly be questioned by any careful reader of his 
early volumes, in which the broad principles of art, as he con- 
ceived them, are unfolded. Certainly no one doubts the grand 
sincerity with which he has pursued his purpose of improving 
public taste and public morals. For half a century he has been 
a maker of books, his works now numbering over forty volumes. 
Freed from the routine of professional life by the possession of a 
vast fortune, he has devoted his entire life to study and writing, 
performing both with scrupulous thoroughness. The opinions 
maintained in "Modern Painters " are grounded, he affirms, on 
the results of a "laborious study of practical art from youth," 
and " on familiar acquaintance with every important work of art 
from Antwerp to Naples." One of the most striking features 
of his works is the extensive and accurate knowledge of external 
nature displayed, and the felicitous combination of science with 
poetry. In the midst of this busy life of study Ruskin has been 
a frequent lecturer in all the larger towns of England and at the 
Universities. In 1867 he was appointed "Rode Lecturer" at 
Cambridge, and from 1870 to 1879 he was " Slade Professor of 
Art" at Oxford, to which position he has been recently recalled. 

In studying the works of Ruskin we may regard him in three 
aspects ; as a poet of nature, revealing and describing its beau- 
ties ; as a thinker, applying himself to questions of social reform ; 
and as a critic, realising, in Matthew Arnold's sense, the higher 
creative function of criticism. This volume of selections is in- 
tended simply to illustrate the first phase of his power ; and 
this can be adequately done, in this manner, since it is possible 
to remove without defacement many of the gems of poetic 
description from their setting of expository prose. For his 
opinions and theories of art and society, the student must go 
to the original works. 



RUSKIN'S WORD-PAINTING. 



•'Our best modern English word-painters are, amongst the poets, 
Tennyson, Shelley, Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, and Keats, in the order 
of excellence. And of prose writers, Ruskin stands quite alone; then 
after him, but at a- great distance, come about a dozen others whom it 
is needless to particularize. Of all these I give to Tennyson the first 
place. Even Ruskin, the best prose word-painter who ever lived, says 
that no description of his is worth four lines oi Tennyson . . . . ~ 
Mr. Ruskin's art of description in prose is in every way wonderful. 
He complained somewhere that his readers missed the arguments in 
his books, and dashed at the descriptions. A novel complaint truly ! 
What author but Mr. Ruskin ever found his descriptions dangerously 
seductive? Other people's descriptions are skipped habitually by the 
prudent reader. Mr. Ruskin's, it appears, do positive injury to the 
graver and more argumentative parts of his writings. He is decidedly 
the first author who has made landscape description too attractive. 
And when we try to get at the reason for this attractiveness in his 
word-pictures, we see that it is mainly owing to an unusual magnifi- 
cence of language, and a studied employment of metaphor."— Philip 
Gilbert Hamerton. 

" Whatever he may call himself, it is as a painter of nature with 
words that Ruskin is named with enthusiasm wherever men speak the 
English tongue. It has been through his books, not through his pic- 
tures, that he has mainly influenced his generation, and sent that 
wave of passionate enthusiasm for nature into ten thousand young 
hearts which has shown itself in the fresh, impetuous, exulting, and 
sometimes weak and affected naturalism of our recent schools. . . . 
A man gifted with pre-eminent sensibility to nature's beauty, with 
pre-eminent ability to perceive nature's truth, lends a voice to the hills, 
and adds a music to the streams ; he looks on the sea, and it becomes 
more calmly beautiful ; on the clouds, and they are more radiantly 
touched ; he becomes a priest of the mysteries, a dispenser of the 
charities of nature ; and men call him poet. Ruskin stands among 
a select and honored few who have thus interpreted nature's meaning, 
and conveyed her bounty to mankind. He has spoken with a voice of 
fascinating power of those pictures which never change, yet are ever 
new ; which are old, yet not dimmed or defaced ; of the beauty of which 
all art is an acknowledgment, of the admiration of which all art is the 
result, but which, having hung in our view since childhood, we are apt 
to pass lightly by. At his bidding we awake to a new consciousness 
of the beauty and grandeur of the world."— Peter Bayne. 



Sesame and Lilies 



LECTURE I— SESAME 

OF kings' treasuries 

" You shall each have a cake of sesame, — and ten pound." 
Lucian : The Fisherman 

i. My first duty this evening is to ask your pardon for 
the ambiguity of title under which the subject of lecture 
has been announced : for indeed I am not going to talk 
of kings, known as regnant, nor of treasuries, understood 
to contain wealth ; but of quite another order of royalty, 5 
and another material of riches, than those usually acknowl- 
edged. I had even intended to ask your attention for a 
little while on trust, and (as sometimes one contrives, in 
taking a friend to see a favorite piece of scenery) to hide 
what I wanted most to show, with such imperfect cunning 10 
as I might, until we unexpectedly reached the best point 
of view by winding paths. But — and as also I have heard 
it said, by men practised in public address, that hearers 
are never so much fatigued as by the endeavor to follow 
• a speaker who gives them no clue to his purpose, — I will 15 
take the slight mask off at once, and tell you plainly that 
I want to speak to you about the treasures hidden in 
books ; and about the way we find them, and the way we 
lose them. A grave subject, you will say ; and a wide 

Note.— The two lectures that form the volume "Sesame and Lilies '' were 
delivered at Manchester in 1864. 
The notes designated by an asterisk (*) are by Mr Ruskin. 



8 SESAME AND LILIES 

one ! Yes ; so wide that I shall make no effort to touch 
the compass of it. I will try only to bring before you a 
few simple thoughts about reading, which press themselves 
upon me every day more deeply, as I watch the course of 
5 the public mind with respect to our daily enlarging means 
of education ; and the answeringly wider spreading on 
the levels, of the irrigation of literature. 

2. It happens that I have practically some connection 
with schools for different classes of youth ; and I receive 
I0 many letters from parents respecting the education of 
their children. In the mass of these letters I am always 
struck by the precedence which the idea of a " position 
in life " takes above all other thoughts in the parents' — 
more especially in the mothers' — minds. "The educa- 
tion befitting such and such a station in life" — this is the 
phrase, this the object, always. They never seek, as far 
as I can make out, an education good in itself ; even the 
conception of abstract Tightness in training rarely seems 
reached by the writers. But, an education " which shall 
2okeep a good coat on my son's back; — which shall enable 
him to ring with confidence the visitor's bell at double- 
belled doors ; which shall result ultimately in the establish- 
ment of a double-belled door to his own house ; — in a word, 
which shall lead to advancement in life ; — this we pray 
25 for on bent knees — and this is all we pray for." It never 
seems to occur to the parents that there may be an ed- 
ucation which, in itself, is advancement in Life ; — that 
any other than that may perhaps be advancement in 
Death ; and that this essential education might be more 
30 easily got, or given, than they fancy, if they set about it 

21. Double-belled doors. In England it is common to find two bell handles 
at a door, one of which is to be used only by visitors. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 9 

in the right way ; while it is for no price, and by no favor, 
to be got, if they set about it in the wrong. 

3 Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and effective 
in the mind of this busiest of countries, I suppose the 
first — at least that which is confessed with the greatest 5 
frankness, and put forward as the fittest stimulus to youth- 
ful exertion — is this of " Advancement in life." May I 
ask you to consider with me, what this idea practically in- 
cludes, and what it should include ? 

Practically, then, at present, " advancement in life " 10 
means, becoming conspicuous in life ; obtaining a posi- 
tion which shall be acknowledged by others to be respect- 
able or honorable. We do not understand by this ad- 
vancement, in general, the mere making of money, but 
the being known to have made it; not the accomplish- 15 
ment of any great aim, but the being seen to have accom- 
plished it. In a word, we mean the gratification of our 
thirst for applause. That thirst, if the last infirmity of 
noble minds, is also the first infirmity of weak ones ; and, 
on the whole, the strongest impulsive influence of average 20 
humanity : the greatest efforts of the race have always 
been traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catas- 
trophes to the love of pleasure. 

4. I am not about to attack or defend this impulse. I 
want you only to feel how it lies at the root of effort ; es- 25 
pecially of all modern effort. It is the gratification of 
vanity which is, with us, the stimulus of toil and balm of 
repose ; so closely does it touch the very springs of life 
that the wounding of our vanity is always spoken of (and 
truly) as in its measure mortal; we call it " mortification," 30 
using the same expression which we should apply to a 

19. Last infirmity of noble minds. Milton's Lycidas, line 71. 



16 SESAME AND LILIES 

gangrenous and incurable bodily hurt. And although a 
few of us may be physicians enough to recognize the 
various effect of this passion upon health and energy, I 
believe most honest men know, and would at once ac- 
5 knowledge, its leading power with them as a motive. 
The seaman does not commonly desire to be made cap- 
tain only because he knows he can manage the ship better 
than any other sailor on board. He wants to be made 
captain that he may be called captain. The clergyman 

10 does not usually want to be made a bishop only because 
he believes that no other hand can, as firmly as his, direct 
the diocese through its difficulties. He wants to be made 
bishop primarily that he may be called " My Lord." And 
a prince does not usually desire to enlarge, or a subject 

15 to gain, a kingdom, because he believes that no one else 

can as well serve the State, upon its throne ; but, briefly, 

because he wishes to be addressed as " Your Majesty," 

by as many lips as may be brought to such utterance. 

5. This, then, being the main idea of " advancement 

20 in life," the force of it applies, for all of us, according to 
our station, particularly to that secondary result of such 
advancement which we call " getting into good society." 
We want to get into good society not that we may have 
it, but that we may be seen in it ; and our notion of its 

25 goodness depends primarily on its conspicuousness. 

Will you pardon me if I pause for a moment to put 
what I fear you may think an impertinent question ? I 
never can go on with an address unless I feel, or know, 
that my audience are either with me or against me : I do 

30 not much care which, in beginning; but I must know 
where they are ; and I would fain find out, at this instant, 
whether you think I am putting the motives of popular 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 1 1 

action too low. I am resolved, to-night, to state them low 
enough to be admitted as probable ; for whenever, in my 
writings on Political Economy, I assume that a little hon- 
esty, or generosity, — or what used to be called " virtue " 
— may be calculated upon as a human motive of action, 5 
people always answer me, saying, " You must not calcu- 
late on that : that is not in human nature : you must not 
assume anything to be common to men but acquisitiveness 
and jealousy; no other feeling ever has influence on them, 
except accidentally, and in matters out of the way of IO 
business." I begin, accordingly, to-night low in the scale 
of motives ; but I must know if you think me right in doing 
so. Therefore, let me ask those who admit the love of 
praise to be usually the strongest motive in men's minds 
in seeking advancement, and the honest desire of doing J 5 
any kind of duty to be an entirely secondary one, to hold 
up their hands. (About a dozen hands held up — the audience, 
partly, not being sure the lecturer is serious, a7id, partly, shy 
of expressing opinion.) I am quite serious — I really do 
want to know what you think; however, I can judge by 20 
putting the reverse question. Will those who think that 
duty is generally the first, and love of praise the second, 
motive, hold up their hands ? (One hand reported to have 
been held up, behind the lecturer.) Very good : I see you 
are with me, and that you think I have not begun too near 2 5 
the ground. Now, without teasing you by putting farther 
question, I venture to assume that you will admit duty as 
at least a secondary or tertiary motive. You think that 
the desire of doing something useful, or obtaining some 
real good, is indeed an existent collateral idea, though 3° 
a secondary one, in most men's desire of advancement. 
You will grant that moderately honest men desire place 



12 SESAME AND LILIES 

and office, at least in some measure, for the sake of benef- 
icent power ; and would wish to associate rather with 
sensible and well-informed persons than with fools and 
ignorant persons, whether they are seen in the company 

5 of the sensible ones or not. And finally, without being 
troubled by repetition of any common truisms about the 
preciousness of friends, and the influence of companions, 
you will admit, doubtless, that according to the sincerity 
of our desire that our friends may be true, and our com- 

iopanions wise, — and in proportion to the earnestness and 
discretion with which we choose both, will be, the general 
chances of our happiness and usefulness. 

6. But granting that we had both the will and the sense 
to choose our friends well, how few of us have the power ! 

1 5 or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere of choice ! 
Nearly all our associations are determined by chance, or 
necessity ; and restricted within a narrow circle. We can- 
not know whom we would ; and those whom we know, we 
cannot have at our side when we most need them. All 

2othe higher circles of human intelligence are, to those 
beneath, only momentarily and partially open. We may, 
by good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and 
hear the sound of his voice ; or put a question to a man 
of science, and be answered good-humoredly. We may 

2 5 intrude ten minutes' talk on a cabinet minister, answered 
probably with words worse than silence, being deceptive ; or 
snatch, once or twice in our lives, the privilege of throw- 
ing a bouquet in the path of a Princess, or arresting 
the kind glance of a Queen. And yet these momentary 

30 chances we covet ; and spend our years, and passions and 
powers in pursuit of little more than these ; while, mean- 
time, there is a society continually open to us, of people 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 13 

who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank 
or occupation; — talk to us in the best words they can 
choose, and of the things nearest their hearts. And this 
society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, and can 
be kept waiting round us all day long, — kings and states- 5 
men lingering patiently, not to grant audience, but to gain 
it ! — in those plainly furnished and narrow ante-rooms, 
our book-case shelves, — we make no account of that com- 
pany, — perhaps never listen to a word they would say, all 
day long ! 10 

7. You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, 
that the apathy with which we regard this company of the 
noble, who are praying us to listen to them ; and the pas- 
sion with which we pursue the company, probably of the 
ignoble, who despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, 15 
are grounded in this, — that we can see the faces of the 
living men, and it is themselves, and not their sayings, 
with which we desire to become familiar. But it is not 
so. Suppose you never were to see their faces : — suppose 
you could be put behind a screen in the statesman's 20 
cabinet, or the prince's chamber, would you not be glad 
to listen to their words, though you were forbidden to 
advance beyond the screen ? And when the screen is 
only a little less, folded in two instead of four, and you 
can be hidden behind the cover of the two boards that 25 
bind a book, and listen all day long, not to the casual 
talk, but to the studied, determined, chosen addresses of 
the wisest of men ; — this station of audience, and honor- 
able privy council, you despise ! 

8. But perhaps you will say that it is because the living 30 
people talk of things that are passing, and are of im- 
mediate interest to you, that you desire to hear them. 



i 4 SESAME AND LILIES 

Nay ; that cannot be so, for the living people will them- 
selves tell you about passing matters, much better in their 
writings than in their careless talk. But I admit that this 
motive does influence you, so far as you prefer those rapid 
5 and ephemeral writings to slow and enduring writings — | 
books, properly so called. For all books are divisible into 
two classes : the books of the hour, and the books of all 
time. Mark this distinction — it is not one of quality only. 
It is not merely the bad book that does not last, and the 

10 good one that does. It is a distinction of* species. There 
are good books for the hour, and good ones for all time ; 
bad books for the hour, and bad ones for all time. I 
must define the two kinds before I go farther. 

9. The good book of the hour, then, — I do not speak 

15 of the bad ones — is simply the useful or pleasant talk of 
some person whom you cannot otherwise converse with,, 
printed for you. Very useful often, telling you what you 
need to know ; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's 
present talk would be. These bright accounts of travels ; 

20 good-humored and witty discussions of question; lively 
or pathetic story-telling in the form of novel ; firm fact- 
telling, by the real agents concerned in the events of 
passing history ; — all these books of the hour, multiply- 
ing among us as education becomes more general, are a 

2 5 peculiar possession of the present age : we ought to be 
entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of our- 
selves if we make no good use of them. But we make 
the worst possible use if we allow them to usurp the place 
of true books : for, strictly speaking, they are not books 

3° at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print. 
Our friend's letter may be delightful, or necessary, to-day : 
whether worth keeping or not, is to be considered. The 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 15 

newspaper may be entirely proper at breakfast time, but 
assuredly it is not reading for all day. So, though bound 
up in a volume, the long letter which gives you so pleasant 
an account of the inns, and roads, and weather last year 
at such a place, or which tells you that amusing story, or 5 
gives you the real circumstances of such and such events, 
however valuable for occasional reference, may not be, in 
the real sense of the word, a " book " at all, nor in the 
real sense, to be "read." A book is essentially not a 
talked thing, but a written thing ; and written, not with a 10 
view of mere communication, but of permanence. The 
book of talk is printed only because its author cannot 
speak to thousands of people at once ; if he could, he 
would — the volume is mere multiplication of his voice. 
You cannot talk to your friend in India; if you could, 15 
you would ; you write instead : that is mere conveyance of 
voice. But a book is written, not to multiply the voice 
merely, not to carry it merely, but to perpetuate it. The 
author has something to. say which he perceives to be 
true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he 20 
knows, no one has yet said it ; so far as he knows, no one 
else can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and melo- 
diously if he may; clearly, at all events. In the sum of 
his life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things, 
manifest to him ; — this, the piece of true knowledge, or 2 5 
sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has per- 
mitted him to seize. He would fain set it down forever ; 
engrave it on rock, if he could ; saying, " This is the 
best of me ; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, 
loved, and hated, like another ; my life was. as the vapor, 3° 
and is not ; but this I saw and knew : this, if anything of 
mine, is worth your memory." That is his "writing" ; 



1 6 SESAME AND LILIES 

it is, in his small human way, and with whatever degree 
of true inspiration is in him, his inscription, or scripture. 
That is a " Book." 

10. Perhaps you think no books were ever so writ- 

5 ten ? 

But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, 
or at all in kindness ? or do you think there is never any 
honesty or benevolence in wise people ? None of us, I 
hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever 

io bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently 
done, that bit is his book, or his piece of art.* It is 
mixed alw r ays with evil fragments — ill-done, redundant, 
affected work. But if you read rightly, you will easily ■ 
discover the true bits, and those are the book. 

15 11. Now, books of this kind have been written in all 
ages by their greatest men, — by great readers, great 
statesmen, and great thinkers. These are all at your 
choice ; and Life is short. You have heard as much 
before ; — yet, have you measured and mapped out this 

20 short life and its possibilities? Do you know, if you 
read this, that you cannot read that — that what you lose 



* Note this sentence carefully, and compare the " Queen of the Air," § 106. 

" Queen of the Air," § 106. " Thus far of Abbeville building. Now I have here 
asserted two things,— first, the foundation of art in moral character; next, the- 
foundation of moral character in war. I must make both assertions clearer and 
prove them. 

" First, of the foundation of art in moral character. Of course the art-gift and 
amiability of disposition are two different things ; a good man is not necessarily a 
painter, nor does an eye for color necessarily imply an honest mind. But great 
art implies the union of both powers : it is the expression, by an art-gift, of a pure 
soul. If the gift is not there, we can have no art at all; and if the soul — and a 
right soul too — is not there, the art is bad, however dexterous." 

2. Inscription or scripture. All through the lecture Mr. Ruskin attaches the 
greatest value to the study of etymology. The wise teacher will counsel a liberal 
use of the dictionary, and call attention to the author's frequent use of words in un- 
usual meanings strictly in accordance with their original derivation. Both the 
words " inscription " and "scripture " as derived from the Latin scribere, scriptum, 
to write. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 17 

to-day you cannot gain to-morrow ? Will you go and 
gossip with your housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you 
may talk with queens and kings ; or flatter yourselves 
that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own 
claims to respect, that you jostle with the hungry and 5 
common crowd for entree here, and audience there, when 
all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its 
society, wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the 
chosen, and the mighty, of every place and time ? Into 
that you may enter always ; in that you may take fellow- 10 
ship and rank according to your wish ; from that, once 
entered into it, you can never be an outcast but by your 
own fault ; by your aristocracy of companionship there, 
your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, 
and the motives with which you strive to take high place 15 
in the society of the living, measured, as to all the truth 
and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to 
take in this company of the Dead. 

12. "The place you desire," and the place you fit 
yourself for, I must also say ; because, observe, this court 20 
of the past differs from all living aristocracy in this : — it 
is open to labor and to merit, but to nothing else. No 
wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the 
guardian of those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no 
vile or vulgar person ever enters there. At the portieres 25 
of that silent Faubourg St. Germain, there is but brief 
question : " Do you deserve to enter ? Pass. Do you 



6. Entree. Entrance, especially the right to enter. 

24. Elysian gates. The gates into Elysium, the abode of the blest. Only those 
could enter Elysium who were fitted for it by a life of virtue upon earth. 

25. Portieres. Gates. 

26 Faubourg St. Germain. A district of Paris devoted to the residences of 
the old French nobility. 



1 8 SESAME AND LILIES 

ask to be the companion of nobles ? Make yourself noble, 
and you shall be. Do you long for the conversation of 
the wise ? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. 
But on other terms ? — no. If you will not rise to us, we 
5 cannot stoop to you. The living lord may assume courtesy, 
the living philosopher explain his thought to you with 
considerate pain ; but here we neither feign nor interpret ; 
you must rise to the level of our thoughts if you would 
be gladdened by them, and share our feelings if you 

I0 would recognize our presence." 

13. This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that 
it is much. You must, in a word, love these people, if 
you are to be among them. No ambition is of any use. 
They scorn your ambition. You must love them, and 

15 show your love in these two following ways. 

1. — First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and to 
enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe ; 
not to find your own expressed by them. If the person 
who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you need not 

20 read it ; if he be, he will think differently from you in 
many respects. 

Very ready we are to say of a book, " How good this 
is — that's exactly what I think ! " But the right feeling 
is, " How strange that is ! I never thought of that before, 

25 and yet I see it is true ; or if I do not now, I hope I shall, 
some day." But whether thus submissively or not, at 
least be sure that you go to the author to get at his mean- 
ing, not to find yours. Judge it afterwards if you think 
yourself qualified to do so ; but ascertain it first. And 

30 be sure also, if the author is worth anything, that you 
will not get at his meaning all at once ; — nay, that at his 
whole meaning you will not for a long time arrive in any 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 19 

wise. Not that he does not say what he means, and in 
strong words too ; but he cannot say it all ; and what is 
more strange, will not, but in a hidden way and in par- 
able, in order that he may be sure you want it. I cannot 
quite see the reason of this, nor analyze that cruel reti- 5 
cence in the breasts of wise men which makes them 
always hide their deeper thought. They do not give it 
you by way of help, but of reward ; and will make them- 
selves sure that you deserve it before they allow you to 
reach it. But it is the same with the physical type of 10 
wisdom, gold. There seems, to you and me, no reason 
why the electric forces of the earth should not carry 
whatever there is of gold within it at once to the mountain 
tops, so that kings and people might know that all the 
gold they could get was there; and without any trouble 15 
of digging, or anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it 
away, and coin as much as they needed. But Nature 
does not manage it so. She puts it in little fissures in the 
earth, nobody knows where ; you may dig long and find 
none ; you must dig painfully to find any. 20 

14. And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. 
When you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, 
" Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would ? 
Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in 
good trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my 25 
breath good, and my temper ? " And, keeping the figure 
a little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a 
thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of 
being the author's mind or meaning, his words are as the 
rock which you have to crush and smelt in order to get at 3° 
it. And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learn- 
ing ; your smelting furnace is your own thoughtful soul. 



20 SESAME AND LILIES 

Do not hope to get at any good author's meaning with- 
out those tools and that fire ; often you will need sharpest, 
finest chiselling, and patientest fusing, before you can 
gather one grain of the metal. 
5 15. And, therefore, first of all, I tell you earnestly and 
authoritatively, (I know I am right in this,) you must get 
into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring 
yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable — nay, letter 
by letter. For though it is only by reason of the oppo- 

iosition of letters in the function of signs, to sounds 
in the function of signs, that the study of books is 
called "literature," and that a man versed in it is 
called, by the consent of nations, a man of letters 
instead of a man of books, or of words, you may 

15 yet connect with that accidental nomenclature this real 
fact, — that you might read all the books in the British 
Museum (if you could live long enough), and remain an 
utterly " illiterate," uneducated person ; but that if you 
read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, — that is to 

20 say, with real accuracy, — you are for evermore in some 
measure an educated person. The entire difference be- 
tween education and non-education (as regards the merely 
intellectual part of it), consists in this accuracy. A well 
educated gentleman may not know many languages, — 

25 may not be able to speak any but his own, — may have 
read very few books. But whatever language he knows, 
he knows precisely ; whatever word he pronounces, he 
pronounces rightly ; above all, he is learned in the peerage 
of words ; knows the words of true descent and ancient 

3° blood, at a glance, from words of modern canaille; re- 

12. Literature. Derived from the Latin llttera, litera, a letter. 

30. Canaille. A French term of contempt for the lower classes ; the rabble. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 2 1 

members all their ancestry, their intermarriages, distant 
relationships, and the extent to which they were admitted, 
and offices they held, among the national noblesse of 
words at any time, and in any country. But an unedu- 
cated person may know, by memory, many languages, and 5 
talk them all, and yet truly know not a word of any, — not 
a word even of his own. An ordinarily clever and sen- 
sible seaman will be able to make his way ashore at most 
ports ; yet he has only to speak a sentence of any language 
to be known for an illiterate person ; so also the accent, 10 
or turn of expression of a single sentence, will at once 
mark a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so conclu- 
sively admitted, by educated persons, that a false accent 
or a mistaken syllable is enough, in the parliament of any 
civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain degree of 15 
inferior standing forever, f 

16. And this is right ; but it is a pity that the accuracy 
insisted on is not greater, and required to a serious pur- 
pose. It is right that a false Latin quantity should excite 
a smile in the House of Commons ; but it is wrong that 20 
a false English meani?ig should not excite a frown there. 
Let the accent of words be watched ; and closely : let 
their meaning be watched more closely still, and fewer 
will do the work. A few words, well chosen and distin- 
guished, will do work that a thousand cannot, when every 25 
one is acting, equivocally, in the function of another. 
Yes ; and words, if they are not watched, will do deadly 
work sometimes. There are masked words droning and 
skulking about us in Europe just now, — (there never were 
so many, owing to the spread of a shallow, blotching, 30 
blundering, infectious " information," or rather deforma- 

3. Noblesse. Nobility. 



2 2 SESAME AND LILIES 

tion, everywhere, and to the teaching of catechisms and 
phrases at schools instead of human meanings) — there 
are masked words abroad, I say, which nobody under- 
stands, but which everybody uses, and most people will 

5 also fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying they mean 
this or that, or the other, of things dear to them : for 
such words wear chamaeleon cloaks — " groundlion " cloaks, 
of the color of the ground of any man's fancy : on that 
ground they lie in wait, and rend him with a spring from 

io it. There never were creatures of prey so mischievous, 
never diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, 
as these masked words ; they are the unjust stewards of 
all men's ideas : whatever fancy or favorite instinct a man 
most cherishes, he gives to his favorite masked word to 

iS take care of for him ; the word at last comes to have an 
infinite power over him, — you cannot get at him but by 
its ministry. 

17. And in languages so mongrel in breed as the 
English, there is a fatal power of equivocation put into 

20 men's hands, almost whether they will or no, in being 
able to use Greek or Latin words for an idea when they 
want it to be awful ; and Saxon or otherwise common 
words when they want it to be vulgar. What a singular 
and salutary effect, for instance, would be produced on 

25 the minds of people who are in the habit of taking the 
Form of the " Word " they live by, for the Power of which 
that Word tells them, if we always either retained, or re- 
fused, the Greek form " biblios," or biblion," as the right 
expression for " book " — instead of employing it only in 

7. Chamaeleon. Derived from the Greek x°^ on the ground 4 AeW lion, 
groundlion. The Chamseleon is a small lizard which has the power of changing its 
color to some extent according to its surroundings. 

12. Unjust Stewards. Luke 16: 1-8. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 23 

the one instance in which we wish to give dignity to the 
idea, and translating it into English everywhere else. 
How wholesome it would be for many simple persons if, 
in such places (for instance) as Acts xix. 19, we retained 
the Greek expression, instead of translating it, and they 5 
had to read — " Many of them also which used curious 
arts, brought their Bibles together, and burnt them before 
all men ; and they counted the price of them, and found 
it fifty thousand pieces of silver ! " Or if, on the other 
hand, we translated where we retain it, and always spoke 10 
of " the Holy Book," instead of " Holy Bible," it might 
come into more heads than it does at present, that the 
Word of God, by which the heavens were of old, and by 
which they are now kept in store,* cannot be made a 
present of to anybody in morocco binding ; nor sown on x 5 
any wayside by help either of steam plough or steam 
press ; but is nevertheless being offered to us daily, and 
by us with contumely refused : and sown in us daily, and 
by us, as instantly as may be, choked. 

18. So, again, consider what effect has been produced 20 
on the English vulgar mind by the use of the sonorous 
Latin form " damno," in translating the Greek Karaitpiva, 
when people charitably wish to make it forcible ; and the 
substitution of the temperate " condemn " for it, when 
they choose to keep it gentle; and what notable sermons 2 5 
have been preached by illiterate clergymen on — " He 
that believeth not shall be damned : " though they would 
shrink with horror from translating Heb. xi. 7, "The 
saving of his house, by which he damned the world," or 
John viii. 10-11, " Woman, hath no man damned thee? 3° 
She saith, No man, Lord. Jesus answered her, Neither 

* z Peter, iii. 5-7, 



24 SESAME AND LILIES 

do I damn thee : go, and sin no more." And divisions in 
the mind of Europe, which have cost seas of blood, and 
in the defence of which the noblest souls of men have 
been cast away in frantic desolation, countless as forest- 
5 leaves — though, in the heart of them, founded on deeper 
causes — have nevertheless been rendered practically pos- 
sible, mainly, by the European adoption of the Greek 
word for a public meeting, " ecclesia," to give peculiar 
respectability to such meetings, when held for religious 

to purposes; and other collateral equivocations, such as the 
vulgar English one of using the word " priest " as a con- 
traction for " presbyter." 

19. Now, in order to deal with words rightly, this is the 
habit you must form. Nearly every word in your lan- 

r 5guage has been first a word of some other language — of 
Saxon, German, French, Latin, or Greek ; (not to speak 
of eastern and primitive dialects). And many words 
have been all these ; — that is to say, have been Greek 
first, Latin next, French or German next, and English 

20 last : undergoing a certain change of sense and use on the 
lips of each nation ; but retaining a deep vital meaning, 
which all good scholars feel in employing them, even at 
this day. If you do not know the Greek alphabet, learn 
it ; young or old — girl or boy — whoever you may be, if 

25 you think of reading seriously (which, of course, implies 
that you have some leisure at command), learn your 
Greek alphabet ; then get good dictionaries of all these 
languages, and whenever you are in doubt about a word, 
hunt it down patiently. Read Max Miiller's lectures 

3° thoroughly, to begin with ; and, after that, never let a 

2. Divisions in the mind of Europe. Religious wars. 

8. Ecclesia. Cf. ecclesiastic. 

29, Max MUller. A distinguished Gerrnan Sanscrit .scholar and philologist. 



OP KINGS' TREASURIES 25 

word escape you that looks suspicious. It is severe work ; 
but you will find it, even at first, interesting, and at last, 
endlessly amusing. And the general gain to your char- 
acter, in power and precision, will be quite incalculable. 

Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying to know, 5 
Greek, or Latin, or French. It takes a whole life to learn 
any language perfectly. But you can easily ascertain the 
meanings through which the English word has passed ; 
and those which in a good writer's work it must still bear. 

20. And now, merely for example's sake, I will, with 10 
your permission, read a few lines of a true book with you, 
carefully ; and see what will come out of them. I will 
take a book perfectly known to you all. No English 
words are more familiar to us, yet few perhaps have been 
read with less sincerity. I will take these few following 15 
lines of Lycidas : — 

" Last came, and last did go, 

The pilot of the Galilean lake. 

Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 

(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,) 

He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake. 

' How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, 

Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 

Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ! 

Of other care they little reckoning make, 

Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 

And shove away the worthy bidden guest ; 

Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 

A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else, the least 

That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs ! 

What recks it them ? What need they ? They are sped ; 

And when they list their lean and flashy songs 

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw ; 

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 

But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, 



: 2 S SESAME AND LILIES 

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 
Besides what the grim Wolf with privy paw 
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.' " 

Let us think over this passage, and examine its words. 

5 First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning to 
St. Peter, not only his full episcopal function, but the 
very types of it which Protestants usually refuse most 
passionately ? His " mitred " locks ! Milton was no 
Bishop-lover ; how comes St. Peter to be " mitred " ? 

io " Two massy keys he bore." Is this, then, the power of 
the keys claimed by the Bishops of Rome and is it 
acknowledged here by Milton only in a poetical license, * 
for the sake of its picturesqueness, that he may get the 
gleam of the golden keys to help his effect ? 

*5 Do not think it. Great men do not play stage tricks 
with the doctrines of life and death : only little men do 
that. Milton means what he says ; and means it with 
his might too — is going to put the whole strength of his 
spirit presently into the saying of it. For though not a 

20 lover of false bishops, he was a lover of true ones ; and 
the Lake-pilot is here, in his thoughts, the type and head 
of true episcopal power. For Milton reads that text, 
Matthew, 16 : 19, "I will give unto thee the keys of the 
kingdom of Heaven," quite honestly. Puritan though he 

2 5 be, he would not blot it out of the book because there 
have been bad bishops ; nay, in order to understand him, 
we must understand that verse first ; it will not do to eye 
it askance, or whisper it under our breath, as if it were 
a weapon of an adverse sect. It is a solemn, universal 

30 assertion, deeply to be kept in mind by all sects. But 
perhaps we shall be better able to reason on it if we go on 
a little farther, and come back to it. For clearly this 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 27 

marked insistence on the power of the true episcopate is 
to make us feel more weightily what is to be charged 
against the false claimants of episcopates ; or generally, 
against false claimants of power and rank in the body of 
the clergy : they who, "for their bellies' sake, creep, and 5 
intrude, and climb into the fold." 

21. Never think Milton uses those three words to fill up 
his verse, as a loose writer would. He needs all the 
three; — specially those three, and no more than those — 

" creep," and " intrude," and " climb ; " no other words 10 
would or could serve the turn, and no more could be 
added. For they exhaustively comprehend the three 
classes, correspondent to the three characters, of men 
who dishonestly seek ecclesiastical power. First, those 
who "creep" into the fold; who do not care for office, 15 
nor name, but for secret influence, and do all things 
occultly and cunningly, consenting to any servility of 
office or conduct, so only that they may intimately discern, 
and unawares direct, the minds of men. Then those who 
" intrude " (thrust, that is) themselves into the fold, who 20 
by natural insolence of heart, and stout eloquence of 
tongue, and fearlessly perseverant self-assertion obtain 
hearing and authority with the common crowd. Lastly, 
those who "climb," who, by labor and learning, both 
stout and sound, but selfishly exerted in the cause of their 25 
own ambition, gain high dignities and authorities, and be- 
come " lords over the heritage," though not " ensamples to 
the flock." 

22. Now go on : 

" Of other care they little reckoning make, 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast. 
Blind mouths ' ' 

28. . . . heritage, . . . flock. 1, Peter v. 3. 



2 8 SESAME AND LILIES 

I pause again, for this is a strange expression : a broken 
metaphor, one might think, careless and unscholarly. 

Not so ; its very audacity and pithiness are intended tc 

make us look closer at the phrase and remember it. 

5 Those two monosyllables express the precisely accurate 

contraries of right character, in the two great offices 

of the Church — those of bishop and pastor. 

A " Bishop " means " a person who sees." 

A " Pastor " means " a person who feeds." 
io The most unbishoply character a man can have is 
therefore to be Blind. 

The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to 
be fed, — to be a Mouth. 

Take the two reverses together, and you have " blind 
15 mouths." We may advisably follow out this idea a little. 
Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from 
bishops desiring power more than light. They want 
authority, not outlook. Whereas their real office is not to 
rule ; though it may be vigorously to exhort and rebuke ; it 
20 is the king's office to rule ; the bishop's office is to oversee 
the flock ; to number it, sheep by sheep ; to be ready always 
to give full account of it. Now, it is clear he cannot give 
account of the souls, if he has not so much as numbered 
the bodies of his flock. The first thing, therefore, that a 
25 bishop has to do is at least to put himself in a position 
in which, at any moment, he can obtain the history, from 
childhood, of every living soul in his diocese, and of its 
present state. Down in that back street, Bill and Nancy 
knocking each other's teeth out ! — Does the bishop know 

8. Bishop. The word is derived from the Greek epi over skopos inspector, thus 
an episcopus or bishop is one who oversees. 

9. Pastor. The Lati;i word for shepherd, from pascere, pashim, to feed, to 

pasture. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 29 

all about it ? Has he his eye upon them ? Has he had 'his 
eye upon them ? Can he circumstantially explain to us 
how Bill got into the habit of beating Nancy about the 
head ? If he cannot he is no bishop, though he had 
a mitre as high as Salisbury steeple ; he is no bishop, — 5 
he has sought to be at the helm instead of the masthead ; 
he has no sight of things. " Nay," you say, " it is not 
his duty to look after Bill in the back street." What ! the 
fat sheep that have full fleeces — you think it is only those 
he should look after, while (go back to your Milton) " the 10 
hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, besides what the 
grim wolf, with privy paw" (bishops knowing nothing 
about it) " daily devours apace, and nothing said " ? 

" But that's not our idea of a bishop." * Perhaps not ; 
but it was St. Paul's ; and it was Milton's. They may be 15 
right, or we may be; but we must not think we are read- 
ing either one or the other by putting our meaning into 
their words. 

23. I go on. 

20 
" But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw." 

This is to meet the vulgar answer that " if the poor are 
not looked after in their bodies, they are in their souls ; 
they have spiritual food." 

And Milton says, " They have no such thing as spiritual 25 
food ; they are only swollen with wind." At first you may 
think that is a coarse type, and an obscure one. But 
again, it is a quite literally accurate one. Take up your 
Latin and Greek dictionaries, and find out the meaning 

* Compare the 13th Letter in "Time and Tide." 
5. Salisbuiy. Salisbury cathedral in England is noted for having a spire 400 
feet high, the loftiest in the United Kingdom. The cathedral was built in the 
thirteenth century. 



$0 SESAME AND LILIES 

of " Spirit." It is only a contraction of the Latin word 
" breath," and an indistinct translation of the Greek word 
for "wind." The same word is used in writing, "The 
wind bloweth where it listeth ; " and in writing, " So is 
5 every one that is born of the spirit ; " born of the breath, 
that is ; for it means the breath of God, in soul and body. 
We have the true sense of it in our words " inspiration " 
and " expire." Now, there are two kinds of breath with 
which the flock may be filled; God's breath and man's. 

io The breath of God is health, and life, and peace to them, 
as the air of heaven is to the flocks on the hills ; but man''s 
breath — the word which he calls spiritual — is disease and 
contagion to them, as the fog of the fen. They rot in- 
wardly with it; they are puffed up by it, as a dead body 

15 by the vapors of its own decomposition. This is liter- 
ally true of all false religious teaching ; the first, and last, 
and fatalest sign of it is that " puffing up." Your con- 
verted children, who teach their parents ; your converted 
convicts, who teach honest men ; your converted dunces, 

20 who, having lived in cretinous stupefaction half their lives, 
suddenly awaking to the fact of there being a God, fancy 
themselves therefore His peculiar people and messengers ; 
your sectarians of every species, small and great, Catholic 
or Protestant, of high church or low, in so far as they 

25 think themselves exclusively in the right and others wrong ; 
and pre-eminently, in every sect, those who hold that men 
can be saved by thinking rightly instead of doing rightly, 
by work instead of act, and wish instead of work ; — these 
are the true fog children — clouds, these, without water; 

3° bodies, these, of putrescent vapor and skin, without blood 
or flesh ; blown bag-pipes for the fiends to pipe with — 

2. Greek word.Tn/eO^a. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 31 

corrupt, and corrupting, — " Swoln with wind, and the rank 
mist they draw." 

24. Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting the 
power of the keys, for now we can understand them. 
Note the difference between Milton and Dante in their 5> 
interpretation of this power : for once, the latter is weaker 
in thought ; he supposes both the keys to be of the gate of 
heaven ; one is of gold, the other of silver : they are given 
by St. Peter to the sentinel angel ; and it is not easy to 
determine the meaning either of the substances of the io> 
three steps of the gate, or of the two keys. But Milton 
makes one, of gold, the key of heaven ; the other, of iron, 
the key of the prison in which the wicked teachers are to 
be bound who "have taken away the key of knowledge, 
yet entered not in themselves." 15 

We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor are 
to see, and feed ; and of all who do so it is said, " He 
that watereth, shall be watered also himself." But the 
reverse is truth also. He that watereth not, shall be 
withered himself ; and he that seeth not, shall himself be 20, 
shut out of sight — shut into the perpetual prison-house. 
And that prison opens here, as well as hereafter ; he who 
is to be bound in heaven must first be bound on earth. 
That command to the strong angels, of which the rock- 
apostle is the image, " Take him, and bind him hand and 25 
foot, and cast him out," issues, in its measure, against the 
teacher, for every help withheld, and for every truth re- 
fused, and for every falsehood enforced ; so that he is 

1 1 . Two keys. See Purgatory, canto ix. It would be well for the teacher to, 
read to the class a good translation of this passage and others mentioned later. 
15. "... themselves." Luke 11,52. 
18. " . . . himself." Proverbs n, 25. 
26. "... out." Matthew 22,. 13. 



32 SESAME AND LILIES 

more strictly fettered the more he fetters, and farther out- 
cast, as he more and more misleads, till at last the bars of 
the iron cage close upon him, and as " the golden opes, 
the iron shuts amain." 
5 25. We have got something out of the lines, I think, 
and much more is yet to be found in them ; but we have 
done enough by way of example of the kind of word-by- 
word examination of your author which is rightly called 
" reading ; " watching every accent and expression, and 

10 putting ourselves always in the author's place, annihilating 
our own personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as 
to be able assuredly to say, " Thus Milton thought," not 
" Thus I thought, in mis-reading Milton." And by this 
process you will gradually come to attach less weight to 

15 your own "Thus I thought" at other times. You will 
begin to perceive that what you thought was a matter of 
no serious importance ; — that your thoughts on any sub- 
ject are not perhaps the clearest and wisest that could 
be arrived at thereupon : — in fact, that unless you are a 

20 very singular person, you cannot be said to have any 
" thoughts " at all ; that you have no materials for them, 
in any serious matters ;.*— no right to "think," but only 
to try to learn more of the facts. Nay, most probably all 
your life (unless, as I said, you are a singular person) you 

25 will have no legitimate right to an " opinion " on any busi- 
ness, except that instantly under your hand. What must 
of necessity be done, you can always find out, beyond 
question, how to do. Have you a house to keep in order, 
a commodity to sell, a field to plough, a ditch to cleanse ? 

3° There need be no two opinions about the proceedings ; it 

* Modern " education " for the most part signifies giving people the faculty of 
thinking wrong on every conceivable subject of importance to them. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 



33 



is at your peril if you have not much more than an 
" opinion " on the way to manage such matters. And 
also, outside of your own business, there are one or two 
subjects on which you are bound to have but one opinion. 
That roguery and lying are objectionable, and are in- 5 
stantly to be flogged out of the way whenever discovered ; 
— that covetousness and love of quarrelling are danger- 
ous dispositions even in children, and deadly dispositions 
in men and nations ; — that in the end, the God of heaven 
and earth loves active, modest, and kind people, and hates 10 
idle, proud, greedy, and cruel. ones; — on these general 
facts you are bound to have but one, and that a very 
strong, opinion. For the rest, respecting religions, gov- 
ernments, sciences, arts, you will find that, on the whole, 
you can know nothing, — judge nothing; that the best 15 
you can do, even though you may be a well-educated per- 
son, is to be silent, and strive to be wiser every day, and 
to understand a little more of the thoughts of others, 
which so soon as you try to do honestly, you will discover 
that the thoughts even of the wisest are very little more 2 ° 
than pertinent questions. To put the difficulty into a 
clear shape, and exhibit to you the grounds for indecision, 
that is all they can generally do for you ! — and well for 
them and for us, if indeed they are able " to mix the 
music with our thoughts, and sadden us with heavenly 25 
doubts," This writer, from whom I have been reading 
to you, is not among the first or wisest : he sees shrewdly 
as far as he sees, and therefore it is easy to find out his 
full meaning; but with the greater men, you cannot 
fathom their meaning ; they do not even wholly measure 30 
it themselves, — it is so wide. Suppose I had asked you, 
for instance, to seek for Shakespeare's opinion, instead of 
3 



34 SESAME AND LILIES 

Milton's, on this matter of Church authority ? — or of 
Dante's ? Have any of you, at this instance, the least 
idea what either thought about it ? Have you ever bal- 
anced the scene with the bishops in Richard III. against 

5 the character of Cranmer ? the description of St. Francis 
and St. Dominic against that of him who made Virgil 
wonder to gaze upon him, — " disteso, tanto vilmente, nelF 
eterno esilio ; " or of him whom Dante stood beside, " come 
'1 frate che confessa lo perndo assassin ? " * Shakespeare 

io and Alighieri knew men better than most of us, I pre- 
sume ! They were both in the midst of the main struggle 
between the temporal and spiritual powers. They had an 
opinion, we may guess. But where is it ? Bring it into 
court ! Put Shakespeare's or Dante's creed into articles, 

15 and send it up for trial by the Ecclesiastical Courts ! 

26. You will not be able, I tell you again, for many and 
many a day, to come at the real purposes and teaching 
of these great men ; but a very little honest study of them 
will enable you to perceive that what you took for your 

20 own "judgment" was mere chance prejudice, and 
drifted, helpless, entangled weed of castaway thought; 
nay, you will see that most men's minds are indeed little 
better than rough heath wilderness, neglected and stub- 
born, partly barren, partly overgrown with pestilent brakes 

25 and venomous, wind-sown herbage of evil surmise ; that 
the first thing you have to do for them, and yourself, is 

* Dantes Inferno xxiii. 125, 126 ; xix. 49, 50. 

5. Cranmer. (1489-1556.) Archbishop of Canterbury and a leading reformer. 

6. Description of St. Francis and St. Dominic. See Dante's Paradise, 
cantos 11 and 12. 

7. "Disteso, etc." "Thus abjectly extended on the cross in banishment 
eternal." 

8. "Come," etc., "Like the friar that doth shrive a wretch for murder 
doom'd." 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 35 

eagerly and scornfully to set fire to this; burn all the 
jungle into wholesome ash-heaps, and then plough and 
sow. All the true literary work before you, for life, must 
begin with obedience to that order, " Break up your 
fallow ground, and sow not among thorns." 5 

27. II. * Having then faithfully listened to the great 
teachers, that you may enter into their Thoughts, you 
have yet this higher advance to make ;— you have to 
enter into their Hearts. As you go to them first for clear 
sight, so you must stay with them, that you may share at 10 
last their just and mighty Passion. Passion, or " sensa- 
tion/' I am not afraid of the word : still less of the thing* 
You have heard many outcries against sensation lately ; 
but, I can tell you, it is not less sensation we want, but 
more. The ennobling difference between one man and 15 
another, — between one animal and another, — is precisely 
in this, that one feels more than another. If we were 
sponges, perhaps sensation might not be easily got for us ; 

if we were earth-worms, liable at every instant to be cut 
in two by the spade, perhaps too much sensation might 20 
not be good for us. But being human creatures, it is good 
for us ; nay, we are only human in so far as we are sensi- 
tive ; and our honor is precisely in proportion to our 
passion. 

28. You know I said of that great and pure society of 2 5 
the Dead, that it would allow " no vain or vulgar person 
to enter there." What do you think I meant by a 

" vulgar " person ? What do you yourselves mean by 
' vulgarity ? " You will find it a fruitful subject of thought ; 
but, briefly, the essence of all vulgarity lies in want of 3° 

* Compare § 13 above. 

5. " . . . among thorns. " Jeremiah iv. 3. 



36 SESAME AND LILIES 

sensation. Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an 
untrained and undeveloped bluntness of body and mind ; 
but in true inbred vulgarity, there is a dreadful callous- 
ness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every sort 

5 of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, 
without horror, and without pity. It is in the blunt hand 
and the dead heart, in the diseased habit, in the hardened 
conscience, that men become vulgar ; they are forever 
vulgar, precisely in proportion as they are incapable of 

10 sympathy — of quick understanding, — of all that, in deep 
insistence on the common, but most accurate term, may be 
called the " tact " or " touch-faculty," of body and soul : 
that tact which the Mimosa has in trees, which the pure 
woman has above all creatures ; — fineness and fulness of 

15 sensation, beyond reason; — the guide and sanctifier of 
reason itself. Reason can but determine what is true : — 
it is the God-given passion of humanity which alone can 
recognize what God has made good. 

29. We come then to that great concourse of the Dead, 

20 not merely to know from them what is true, but chiefly to 
feel with them what is just. Now, to -feel with them, we 
must be like them ; and none of us can become that 
without pains. As the true knowledge is disciplined and 
tested knowledge, — not the first thought that comes, — so* 

25 the true passion is disciplined and tested passion, — not 
the first passion that comes. The first that come are the 
vain, the false, the treacherous ; if you yield to them, they 
will lead you wildly and far, in vain pursuit, in hollow en- 
thusiasm, till you have no true purpose and no true passion 

30 left. Not that any feeling possible to humanity is in 

12. Tact. Derived from the Latin tangere, tactum, to touch. The sensitive 
plant is a Mimosa. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 37 

itself wrong, but only wrong when undisciplined. Its 
nobility is in its force and justice ; it is wrong when it is 
weak, and felt for paltry cause. There is a mean wonder, 
as of a child who sees a juggler tossing golden balls, 
and this is base, if you will. But do you think that the 5 
wonder is ignoble, or the sensation less, with which 
every human soul is called to watch the golden halls of 
heaven tossed through the night by the Hand that made 
them ? There is a mean curiosity, as of a child opening 
a forbidden door, or a servant prying into her master's 10 
business ; — and a noble curiosity, questioning, in the front 
of danger, the source of the great river beyond the sand, — 

\ the place of the great continent beyond the sea ; — a nobler 
curiosity still, which questions of the source of the River 
of Life, and of the space of the Continent of Heaven — *5 
things which " the angels desire to look into." So the 
anxiety is ignoble, with which you linger over the course 
and catastrophe of an idle tale ; but do you think the 
anxiety is less or greater, with which you watch, or ought 

±o watch, the dealings of fate and destiny with the life of 20 
an agonized nation ? Alas ! it is the narrowness, selfish- 
ness, minuteness, of your sensation that you have to de- 
plore in England at this day ; — sensation which spends 
itself in bouquets and speeches ;" in revellings and junket- 
ings ; in sham fights and gay puppet shows, while you 2 5 
can look on and see noble nations murdered, man by 
man, without an effort or a tear. 

30. I said " minuteness " and " selfishness " of sensa- 
tion, but it would have been enough to have said " in 
justice" or "unrighteousness" of sensation. For as in 3° 

16. "... to look into." 1 Peter i. 2. 

21. An agonized nation. This lecture was delivered in 1864, and was thus 
composed during our civil war. * 



38 SESAME AND LILIES 

nothing is a gentleman better to be discerned from a 
vulgar person, so in nothing is a gentle nation (such 
nations have been) better to be discerned from a mob, 
than in this, — that their feelings are constant and just, 
^ results of due contemplation, and of equal thought. You 
can talk a mob into anything ; its feelings may be — 
usually are — on the whole, generous and right; but it has 
no foundation for them, no hold of them ; you may tease 
or tickle it into any, at your pleasure ; it thinks by in- 

iofection, for the most part, catching an opinion like a cold, 
and there is nothing so little that it will not roar itself 
wild about, when the fit is on ; — 'nothing so great but it 
will forget in an hour, when the fit is past. But a gentle- 
man's, or a gentle nation's, passions are just, measured, 

15 and continuous. A great nation, for instance, does not 
spend its entire national wits for a couple of months in 
weighing evidence of a single ruffian's having done a 
single murder ; and for a couple of years see its own 
children murder each other by their thousands or tens of 

20 thousands a day, considering only what the effect is likely 
to be on the price of cotton, and caring nowise to deter- 
mine which side of battle is in the wrong. Neither dpes 
a great nation send its poor little boys to jail for stealing 
six walnuts ; and allow its bankrupts to steal their 

25 hundreds of thousands with a bow, and its bankers, rich 
with poor men's savings, to close their doors "under 
circumstances over which they have no control," with a 
" by your leave " ; and large landed estates to be bought 
by men who have made their money by going with armed 

30 steamers up and down the China Seas, selling opium at 
the cannon's mouth, and altering, for the benefit of the 
foreign nation, the common highwayman's demand of 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 



39 



" your money or your life," into that of " your money and 
your life." Neither does a great nation allow the lives of 
its innocent poor to be parched out of them by fog fever, 
and rotted out of them by dunghill plague, for the sake 
of sixpence a life extra per week to its landlords ; # and 5 
then debate, with drivelling tears, and diabolical sym- 
pathies, whether it ought not piously to save, and nursingly 
cherish, the lives of its murderers. Also, a great nation 
having made up its mind that hanging is quite the whole- 
somest process for its homicides in general, can yet with i 
mercy distinguish between the degrees of guilt in homi- 
cides ; and does not yelp like a pack of frost-pinched 
wolf-cubs on the blood-track of an unhappy crazed boy, 
or gray-haired clodpate Othello, " perplexed i' the ex- 
treme," at the very moment that it is sending a Minister 15 
of the Crown to make polite speeches to a man who is 
bayoneting young girls in their fathers' sight, and killing 
noble youths in cold blood, faster than a country butcher 
kills lambs in spring. And, lastly, a great nation does 
not mock Heaven and its Powers, by pretending belief in 2 © 
a revelation which asserts the love of money to be the 
root of all evil, and declaring, at the same time, that it is 
actuated, and intends to be actuated, in all chief national 
deeds and measures, by no other love. 

31. My friends, I do not know why any of us should 25 
talk about reading. We want some sharper discipline 
than that of reading ; but, at all events, be assured, we 



* See note at end of lecture. I have put it in large type, because the course 
of matters since it was written has made it perhaps better worth attention. 

14. An unhappy crazed boy, or gray=haired clodpate Othello. An 
allusion to some sensational murders of the day. By Othello the author means of 
course a jealous husband who has killed his wife. 

15. "Perplexed i' the extreme." Othello, act V., scene 2. 



40 SESAME AND LILIES 

cannot read. No reading is possible for a people with its 
mind in this-state. No sentence of any great writer is in- 

. telligible to them. It is simply and sternly impossible for 
the English public, at this moment, to understand any 

5 thoughtful writing,— so incapable of thought has it be- 
come in its insanity of avarice. Happily, our disease is, 
as yet, little worse than this incapacity of thought ; it is 
not corruption of the inner nature ; we ring true still, 
when anything strikes home to us ; and though the idea 

io that everything should "pay" has infected our every pur- 
pose so deeply, that even when we would play the good 
Samaritan, we never take out our twopence and give 
them to the host, without saying, " When I come again, 
thou shalt give me fourpence," there is a capacity of 

15 noble passion left in our hearts' core. We show it in our 
work — in our war, — even in those unjust domestic affec- 
tions which make us furious at a small private wrong, 
while we are polite to a boundless public one. : we are 
still industrious to the last hour of the day, though we 

20 add the gambler's fury to the laborer's patience ; we are 
still brave to the death, though incapable of discerning 
true cause for battle ; and are still true in affection to our 
own flesh, to the death, as the sea-monsters are, and the 
rock-eagles. And there is hope for a nation while this 

25 can be still said of it. As long as it holds its life in its 
hand, ready to give it for its honor (though a foolish 
honor), for its love (though a selfish love), and for its bus- 
iness (though a base business), there is hope for it. But 
hope only ; for this instinctive, reckless virtue cannot last. 

30 No nation can last, which has made a mob of itself, how- 
ever generous at heart. It must discipline its passions, 
and direct them, or they will discipline it, one day, with 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 41 

scorpion-whips. Above all, a nation cannot last as a 
money-making mob : it cannot with impunity, — it cannot 
with existence, — go on despising literature, despising 
science, despising art, despising nature, despising com- 
passion, and concentrating its soul on Pence. Do you 5 
think these are harsh or wild words ? Have patience 
with me but a little longer. I will prove their truth to 
you, clause by clause. 

32. I. I say first we have despised literature. What 
do we, as a nation, care about books ? How much do 10 
you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or 
private, as compared with what we spend on our horses ? 
If a man spends lavishly on his library, you call him mad 
— a bibliomaniac. But you never call any one a horse- 
maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their 15 
horses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves 
by their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you 
think the contents of the book-shelves of the United 
Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, as compared 
with the contents of its wine-cellars ? What position 20 
would its expenditure on literature take, as compared 
with its expenditure on luxurious eating ? We talk of 
food for the mind, as of food for the body : now a good 
book contains such food inexhaustibly ; it is a provision 
for life, and for the best part of us ; yet how long most 25 
people would look at the best book before they would 
give the price of a large turbot for it ! Though there 
have been men who have pinched their stomachs and 
bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries were 
cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than most men's 3°^ 
dinners are. We are few of us put to such trial, and 
more the pity ; for, indeed, a precious thing is all the 



42 SESAME AND LILIES 

more precious to us if it has been won by work or econ- 
omy ; and if public libraries were half as costly as 
public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what brace- 
lets do, even foolish men and women might sometimes 
5 suspect there was good in reading, as well as in munching 
and sparkling ; whereas the very cheapness of literature 
is making even wise people forget that if a book is worth 
reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything 
which is not worth much ; nor is it serviceable, until it 

iohas been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; 
and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you 
want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in 
an armory, or a housewife bring the spice she needs 
from her store. Bread of flour is good ; but there is bread, 

15 sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book ; and 
the family must be poor indeed which, once in their lives, 
cannot, for such multipliable barley-loaves, pay their 
baker's bill. We call ourselves a rich nation, and we are 
filthy and foolish enough to thumb each other's books out 

20 of circulating libraries ! 

32>- II. I say we have despised science. "What!" 
you exclaim, "are we not foremost in all discovery,* and 
is not the whole world giddy by reason, or unreason, of 
our inventions?" Yes, but do you suppose that is nation- 

25 al work ? That work is all done in spite of the nation ; by 
private people's zeal and money. We are glad enough, 
indeed, to make our profit of science ; we snap up any- 
thing in the way of a scientific bone that has meat on it, 
eagerly enough ; but if the scientific man comes for a 

3° bone or a crust to us, that is another story. What have 

* Since this was written, the answer has become definitely — No ; we having sur- 
rendered the field of Arctic discovery to the Continental nations, as being ourselves 
too poor to pay for ships. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 43 

we publicly done for science ? We are obliged to know 
what o'clock it is, for the safety of our ships, and there- 
fore we pay for an Observatory ; and we allow ourselves, 
in the person of our Parliament, to be annually tormented 
into doing something, in a slovenly way, for the British 5 
Museum; sullenly apprehending that to be a place for 
keeping stuffed birds in, to amuse our children. If any- 
body will pay for their own telescope, and resolve another 
nebula, we cackle over the discernment as if it were our 
own ; if one in ten thousand of our hunting squires sud- 10 
denly perceives that the earth was indeed made to be 
something else than a portion for foxes, and burrows in it 
himself, and tells us where the gold is, and where the 
coals, we understand that there is some use in that ; and 
very properly knight him : but is the accident of his hav- 15 
ing found out how to employ himself usefully any credit 
to us ? (The negation of such discovery among his brother 
squires may perhaps be some discredit to us, if we would 
consider of it.) But if you doubt these generalities, here 
is one fact for us all to meditate upon, illustrative of our 20 
love of science. Two years ago there was a collection of 
the fossils of Solenhofen to be sold in Bavaria : the best 
in existence^ containing many specimens unique for per- 
fectness, and one, unique as an example of a species (a 
whole kingdom of unknown living creatures being an- 25 
nounced by that fossil). This collection, of which the 
mere market worth, among private buyers, would probably 

3. Observatory. At Greenwich. 

8. Their own telescope. It should be " his own," of course. 

22. Fossils of Solenhofen. Near Aichstadt, in Bavaria, occurs a famous de- 
posit of limestone, prolific in fossils. 

24. One. The archa-opteryx macrura, a fossil of a creature, at the time thought 
to be a sort of feathered lizard, but shown by Professor Owen to be a true, but very 
anomalous bird. 



44 SESAME AND LILIES 

have been some thousand or twelve hundred pounds, was 
offered to the English nation for seven hundred : but we 
would not give seven hundred, and the whole series would 
have been in the Munich museum at this moment, if Pro- 
cessor Owen * had not, with loss of his own time, and 
patient tormenting of the British public in person of its 
representatives, got leave to give four hundred pounds at 
once, and himself become answerable for the other three ! 
which the said public will doubtless pay him eventually, 

io but sulkily, and caring nothing about the matter all the 
while ; only always ready to cackle if any credit comes of 
it. Consider, I beg of you, arithmetically, what this fact 
means. Your annual expenditure for public purposes (a 
third of it for military apparatus), is at least fifty millions. 

15 Now ^700 is to ^"50,000,000, roughly, as seven-pence to 
two thousand pounds. Suppose, then, a gentleman of un- 
known income, but whose wealth was to be conjectured 
from the fact that he spent two thousand a year on his 
park walls and footmen only, professes himself fond of 

20 science ; and that one of his servants comes eagerly to 
tell him that an unique collection of fossils, giving clue to 
a new era of creation, is to be had for the sum of seven- 
pence sterling ; and that the gentleman, who is fond of 
science, and spends two thousand a year on his park, an- 

25 swers, after keeping his servant waiting several months, 
" Well ! I'll give you four-pence for them, if you will be 
answerable for the extra three-pence yourself, till next 
year ! " 

* I state this fact without Professor Owen's permission, which of course he could 
not with propriety have granted, had I asked it : but I consider it so important that 
the public should be aware of the fact, that I do what seems to me right, though 
rude. 

5. Sir Richard Owen. A distinguished English anatomist and zoologist, born 
in 1804. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 



45 



34. III. I say you have despised Art! "What!" 
you again answer, "have we not Art exhibitions, miles 
long? and do not we pay thousands of pounds for single 
pictures ? and have we not Art schools and institutions, 
more than ever nation had before ? " Yes, truly, but all 5 
that is for the sake of the shop. You would fain sell can- 
vas as well as coals, and crockery as well as iron ; you 
would take every other nation's bread out of its mouth if 
you could ; * not being able to do that, your ideal of life 
is to stand in thoroughfares of the world, like Ludgate 10 
apprentices, screaming to every passer-by, " What d'ye 
lack ? " You know nothing of your own faculties or cir- 
cumstances ; you fancy that, among your damp, flat, fat 
fields of clay, you can have as quick art-fancy as the 
Frenchman among his bronzed vines, or the Italian under 15 
his volcanic cliffs ; — that Art may be learned as book- 
keeping is, and when learned, will give you more books to 
keep. You care for pictures, absolutely, no more than 
you do for the bills pasted on your dead walls. There is 
always room on the wall for the bills to be read, — never 20 
for the pictures to be seen. You do not know what 
pictures you have (by repute) in the country, nor whether 
they are false or true, nor whether they are taken care of 
or not ; in foreign countries, you calmly see the noblest 
existing pictures in the world rotting in abandoned wreck 25 
— (in Venice you saw the Austrian guns deliberately 
pointed at the palaces containing them), and if you heard 

* That was our real idea of " Free Trade " — " All the trade to myself." You 
find now that by " competition " other people can manage to sell something as well 
as you — and now we call for Protection again. Wretches ! 

11. Ludgate apprentices. The apprentices of old London used to stand at 
the doors of the shops and try to get customers by the cry " What d'ye lack ? " Lud- 
gate Hill is still a busy London street. 

26. In Venice. In August 1849. 



46 SESAME AND LILIES 

that all the fine pictures in Europe were made into sand- 
bags to-morrow on the Austrian forts, it would not trouble 
you so much as the chance of a brace or two of game less 
in your own bags, in a day's shooting. That is your na- 

5 tional love of Art. 

35. IV. You have despised nature; that is to say, all 
the deep and sacred sensations of natural scenery. The 
French revolutionists made stables of the cathedrals of 
France ; you have made racecourses of the cathedrals of 

10 the earth. Your one conception of pleasure is to drive in 
railroad carriages round their aisles, and eat off their 
altars.* You have put a railroad-bridge over the falls of 
Schaffhausen. You have tunnelled the cliffs of Lucerne 
by Tell's chapel ; you have destroyed the Clarens shore 

1 5 of the Lake of Geneva; there is not a quiet valley in 
England that you have not filled with bellowing fire ; 
there is no particle left of English land which you have 
not trampled coal ashes into f — nor any foreign city in 
which the spread of your presence is not marked among 

20 its fair old streets and happy gardens by a consuming 
white leprosy of new hotels and perfumers' shops : the 
Alps themselves, which your own poets used to love so 
reverently, you look upon as soaped poles in a bear-garden, 
which you set yourselves to climb and slide down again, 

25 with " shrieks of delight." When you are past shrieking, 
having no human articulate voice to say you are glad with, 
you fill the quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, 
and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, 

* I meant that the beautiful places of the world — Switzerland, Italy, South Ger- 
many, and so on — are, indeed, the truest cathedrals— places to be reverent in, and to 
worship in ; and that we only care to drive through them ; and to eat and drink at 
their most sacred places. 

t I was singularly struck, some years age, by finding all the river shore at Rich- 
mond, in Yorkshire, black in its earth, from the mere drift of soot-laden air from 
places many miles away. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 47 

and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction. 
I think nearly the two sorrowfullest spectacles I have ever 
seen in humanity, taking the deep inner significance of 
them, are the English mobs in the valley of Chamouni> 
amusing themselves with firing rusty howitzers ; and the $ 
Swiss vintagers of Zurich expressing their Christian thanks 
for the gift of the vine, by assembling in knots in the 
" towers of the vineyards," and slowly loading and firing 
horse-pistols from morning till evening. It is pitiful, to 
have dim conceptions of duty ; more pitiful, it seems to 10 
me, to have conceptions like these, of mirth. 

36. Lastly. You despise compassion. There is no 
need of words of mine for proof of this. I will merely 
print one of the newspaper paragraphs which I am in the 
habit of cutting out and throwing into my store-drawer ; 15 
•here is one from a " Daily Telegraph " of an early date 
this year (1865) ; (date which, though by me carelessly left 
unmarked, is easily discoverable ; for on the back of the 
slip, there is the announcement that " yesterday the seventh 
of the special services of this year was performed by the 20 
Bishop of Ripon in St, Paul's " ;) it relates only one of 
such facts as happen now daily ; this by chance having 
taken a form in which it came before the coroner. I will 
print the paragraph in red. Be sure, the facts themselves 
are written in that color, in a book which we shall all of 2 5 
us, literate or illiterate, have to read our page of, some day. 

" An inquiry was held on Friday by Mr. Richards, deputy 
coroner, at the White Horse tavern, Christ Church, Spital- 
fields, respecting the death of Michael Collins, aged 58 

5. Firing rusty howitzers. To hear the reverb rations among the mountains. 

8. Towers of the vineyards. Vineyards were guarded in biblical times by 
small towers erected in their midst, 2 Chr. xxvi 10; Isa, v. 10; Micah, iv. 8; Matt. 
xxi 33, and travellers in Palestine see them in use to this day. 

24. In red. In the English edition the next paragraph is printed in red ink. 



48 SESAME AND LILIES 

years. Mary Collins, a miserable-looking woman, said 
that she lived with the deceased and his son in a room at 
2, Cobb's Court, Christ Church. Deceased was a 'trans- 
lator ' of boots. Witness went out and bought old boots ; 
5 deceased and his son made them into good ones, and 
then witness sold them for what she could get at the 
shops, which was very little indeed. Deceased and his 
son used to work night and day to try and get a little 
bread and tea, and pay for the room (2s. a week), so as to 

IO keep the home together. On Friday-night week deceased 
got up from his bench and began to shiver. He threw 
down the boots, saying, ' Somebody else must finish them 
when I am gone, for I can do no more.' There was no fire 
and he said, ' I would be better if I was warm.' Witness 

^therefore took two pairs of translated boots * to sell at 
the shop, but she could only get 14^/. for the two pairs,' 
for the people at the shop said, ' We must have our 
profit.* Witness got 141b. of coal, and a little tea and 
bread. Her son sat up the whole night to make the 

20 ' translations,' to get money, but deceased died on Satur- 
day morning. The family never had enough to eat. — 
Coroner : ' It seems to me deplorable that you did not go 
into the workhouse.' Witness: ' We wanted the comforts 
of our little home.' A juror asked what the comforts 

2 , were, for he only saw a little straw in the corner of the 
room, the windows of which were broken. The witness 
began to cry, and said that they had a quilt and other 
little things. The deceased said he never would go into 
the workhouse. In summer, when the season was good, 

~ they sometimes made as much as 10s. profit in the week. 

* One of the things which we must very resolutely enforce, for the good of all 
classes, in our future arrangements, must be that they wear no " translated " 
article of dress. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 



49 



They then always saved towards the next week, which 
was generally a bad one. In winter they made not half 
so much. For three years they had been getting from 
bad to worse. — Cornelius Collins said that he had assisted 
his father since 1847. They used to work so far into the 5 
night that both nearly lost their eyesight. Witness now 
had a film over his eyes. Five years ago deceased ap- 
plied to the parish for aid. The relieving officer gave 
him a 41b. loaf, and told him if he came again he should 
get the ; stones.'* That disgusted deceased, and he would 10 
have nothing to do with them since. They got worse and 
worse until last Friday week, when they had not even a 
halfpenny to buy a candle. Deceased then lay down on 
the straw, and said he could not live till morning : — A 
juror : ' You are dying of starvation yourself, and you 1 5 
ought to go into the house until the summer.' — Witness : 
1 If we went in, we should die. When we come out in 
the summer, we should be like people dropped from the 
sky. No one would know us, and we would not have 

* This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labor is curiously coincident in 
verbal form with a certain passage which some of us may remember. It may per- 
haps be well to preserve beside this paragraph another cutting out of my store- 
drawer, from the " Morning Post." of about a parallel date, Friday, March ioth, 

1865: — "The salons of Mme. C , who did the honors with clever imitative 

grace and elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes, marquises, and counts — in 
fact, with the same male company as one meets at the parties of the Princess Met- 
ternich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some English peers and members of 
Parliament were present, and appeared to enjoy the animated and dazzling improper 
scene. On the second floor the supper tables were loaded with every delicacy of 
the season. That your readers may form some idea of the dainty fare of the Parisian 
demi-monde, I copy the menu of the supper, which was served to all the guests 
(about 200) seated at four o'clock. Choice Yquem, Johannisberg. Lafntte, and 
Tokay, and champagne of the finest vintages were served most lavishly throughout 
the morning. After supper dancing was resume'd with increased animation, and the 
ball terminated with a citable diabolique and a caucatt d'enfer at seven in the 
morning. (Morning service — ' Ere the fresh lawns appeared, under the opening 
eyelids of the Morn.) Here is the menu : — ' Consomme de volaille a la Bagra- 
tion; 16 hors-d'ceuvres varies. Bouchees a la Talleyrand. Saumons froids, sauce 
Ravigote. Filets de bceuf en Bellevue, timbales milanaises, chaudfroid de gibier. 
Dindes truffees. Pates de foies gras, buissons d'ecrevisses, salades venetiennes, 
gelees blanches aux fruits, gateaux mancini, parisiens et parisiennes. Fromages 
glacis. Ananas. Dessert.' " 

4 



SESAME AND LILIES 

even a room. I could work now if I had food, for my 
sight would get better.' Dr. G. P. Walker said deceased 
died from syncope, from exhaustion from want of food. 
The deceased had had no bedclothes. For four months 
5 he had had nothing but bread to eat. There was not a 
particle of fat in the body. There was no disease, but if 
there had been medical attendance, he might have sur- 
vived the syncope or fainting. The coroner having re- 
marked upon the painful nature of the case, the jury re- 

10 turned the following verdict, ' That deceased died from 
exhaustion from want of food and the common necessaries 
of life ; also through want of medical aid.' " 

37. " Why would witness not go into the workhouse ? " 
you ask. Well, the poor seem to have a prejudice against 

15 the workhouse which the rich have not; for of course 
every one who takes a pension from Government goes into 
the workhouse on a grand scale : * only the workhouses for 
the rich do not involve the idea of work, and should be 
called play-houses. Bnt the poor like to die independ- 

20 ently, it appears ; perhaps if we made the play-houses for 
them pretty and pleasant enough, or gave them their pen- 
sions at home, and allowed them a little introductory 
peculation with the public money, their minds might be 
reconciled to the conditions. Meantime, here are the 

25 facts : we make our relief either so insulting to them, or so 
painful, that they rather die than take it at our hands ; or, 
for third alternative, we leave them so untaught and 
foolish that they starve like brute creatures, wild and dumb, 
not knowing what to do, or what to ask. I say, you 



* Please observe this statement, and think of it, and consider how it happens that 
a poor old woman will be ashamed to take a shilling a week from the country — but 
uo one is ashamed to take a pension of a thousand a year. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 5 i 

despise compassion ; if you did not, such a newspaper 
paragraph would be as impossible in a Christian country as 
a deliberate assassination permitted in its public streets.* 
" Christian " did I say ? Alas, if we were but wholesomely 
^-Christian, it would be impossible : it is our imaginary 5 
Christianity that helps us to commit these crimes, for we 
revel and luxuriate in our faith, for the lewd sensation of 
it ; dressing it up, like everything else, in fiction. The 
dramatic Christianity of the organ and aisle, of dawn- 
service and twilight-revival — the Christianity which we 10 
do not fear to mix the mockery of, pictorially, with our 
play about the devil, in our Satanellas, — Roberts, — Fausts ; 
chanting hymns through traceried windows for back-ground 
effect, and artistically modulating the " Dio " through 

* I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the " Pall Mall Gazette" established ; 
for the power of the press in the hands of highly-educated men, in independent posi- 
tion, and of honest purpose, may indeed become all that it has been hitherto vainly 
vaunted to be. Its editor will therefore, I doubt not, pardon me, in that, by very 
reason of my respect for the journal, I do not let pass unnoticed an article in its third 
number, page 5, which was wrong in every word of it, with the intense wrongness 
which only an honest man can achieve who has taken a false turn of thought in the 
outset, and is following it, regardless of consequences. It contained at the end this 
notable passage r — 

"The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction — aye, and the bedstead and 
blankets of affliction, are the very utmost that the law ought to give to outcasts merely 
as outcasts.'''' I merely put beside this expression of the gentlemanly mind of Eng- 
land in 1865, a part of the message which Isaiah was ordered to "lift up his voice 
like a trumpet " in declaring to the gentlemen of his day : " Ye fast for strife, and to 
smite with the fist of wickedness. Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to deal 
thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out( margin, 
'afflicted') to thy house?" The falsehood on which the writer had mentally 
founded himself, as previously stated by him, was this : " To confound the functions 
of the dispensers of the poor-rates with those of the dispensers of a charitable in- 
stitution, is a great and pernicious error." This sentence is so accurately and ex- 
quisitely wrong, that its substance must be thus reversed in our minds before we can 
deal'with any existing problem of national distress. "To understand that the dis- 
pensers of the poor rates are the almoners of the nation, and should distribute its alms 
with a gentleness and freedom of hand as much greater and franker than that possible 
to individual charity, as the collective national wisdom and power may be supposed 
greater than those of any single person, is the foundation of all law respecting 
pauperism." (Since this was written the " Pall Mall Gazette" has become a mere 
party paper — like the rest ; but it writes well, and does more good than mischief on 
the whole.) 

12. Satanellas,— Roberts,— Faust. The opera Satanella is by Balfe; Robert 
le Diable by Meyerbeer, and Faust by Gounod. 

14. Dio. God, in Italian. 



SESAME AND LILIES 



variation on variation of mimicked prayer : (while we 
distribute tracts, next day, for the benefit of uncultivated 
swearers, upon what we suppose to be the signification of 
the Third Commandment ; — ) this gas-lighted, and gas-in- 
5 spired Christianity, we are triumphant in, and draw back 
the hem of our robes from the touch of the heretics who 
dispute it. But to do a piece of common Christian right- 
eousness in a plain English word or deed ; to make Christian 
law any rule of life, and found one National act or hope 

10 thereon, — we know too well what our faith comes to for 
that ! You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke 
than true action or passion out of your modern English re- 
ligion. You had better get rid of the smoke, and the organ 
pipes, both : leave them, and the Gothic windows, and the 

15 painted glass, to the property man ; give up yourcarburetted 
hydrogen ghost in one healthy expiration, and look after 
Lazarus at the doorstep. For there is a true Church wher- 
ever one hand meets another helpfully, and that is the 
only holy or Mother Church which ever was, or ever shall 

20 be. 

38. All these pleasures then, and all these virtues, I 
repeat, you nationally despise. You have, indeed, men 
among you who do not ; by whose work, by whose strength,, 
by whose life, by whose death, you live, and never thank 

25 them. Your wealth, your amusement, your pride, would 
all be alike impossible, but for those whom you scorn or 
forget. The policeman, who is walking up and down the 
black lane all night to watch the guilt you have created 
there ; and may have his brains beaten out, and be maimed 

3° for life, at any moment, and never be thanked ; the sailor 
wrestling with the sea's rage ; the quiet student poring 
over his book or his vial ; the common worker, without 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 



53 



praise, and nearly without bread, fulfilling his task as your 
horses drag your carts, hopeless, and spurned of all ; these 
are the men by whom England lives ; but they are not the 
nation ; they are only the body and nervous force of it, 
acting still from old habit in a convulsive perseverance, 5 
while the mind is gone. Our National wish and purpose 
are only to be amused ; our National religion is the per- 
formance of church ceremonies, and preaching of soporific 
truths (or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while 
we amuse ourselves ; and the necessity for this amusement to 
is fastening on us, as a feverous disease of parched throat 
and wandering eyes — senseless, dissolute, merciless. How 
literally that word Z^-Ease, the Negation and possibility 
of Ease, expresses the entire moral state of our English 
Industry and its Amusements ! 15 

39. When men are rightly occupied, their amusement 
grows out of their work, as the color-petals out of a fruit- 
ful flower ; — when they are faithfully helpful and com- 
passionate, all their emotions become steady, deep, per- 
petual, and vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse to 20 
the body. But now, having no true business, we pour 
our whole masculine energy into the false business of 
money-making ; and having no true emotion, we must 
have false emotions dressed up for us to play with, not 
innocently, as children with dolls, but guiltily and darkly 25 
as the idolatrous Jews with their pictures on cavern walls, 
which men had to dig to detect. The justice we do not 
execute, we mimic in the novel and on the stage; for the 
beauty we destroy in nature, we substitute the metamor- 
phosis of the pantomime, and (the human nature of us 30 
imperatively requiring awe and sorrow of some kind) for 

26. Idolatrous Jews. Ezek. viii. 7, 8, 9. 



54 SESAME AND LILIES 

the noble grief we should have borne with our fellows, 
and the pure tears we should have wept with them, we 
gloat over the pathos of the police court, and gather the 
night-dew of the grave. 
5 40. It is difficult to estimate the true significance of 
these things ; the facts are frightful enough ; — the measure 
of national fault involved in them is perhaps not as great as 
it would at first seem. We permit, or cause, thousands of 
deaths daily, but we mean no harm ; we set fire td 

10 houses, and ravage peasants' fields, yet we should be 
sorry to find we had injured anybody. We are still kind 
at heart ; still capable of virtue, but only as children are. 
Chalmers, at the end of his long life, having had much 
power with the public, being plagued in some serious mat- 

i5ter by a reference to "public opinion," uttered the im- 
patient exclamation, " The public is just a great baby ! " 
And the reason that I have allowed all these graver sub- 
jects of thought to mix themselves up with an inquiry into 
methods of reading, is that, the more I see of our national 

20 faults or miseries, the more they resolve themselves into 
conditions of childish illiterateness and want of education 
in the most ordinary habits of thought. It is, I repeat, 
not vice, not selfishness, not dulness of brain, which we 
have to lament ; but an unreachable schoolboy's reckless- 

2 5 ness, only differing from the true schoolboy's in its inca- 
pacity of being helped, because it acknowledges no master. 
41. There is a curious type of us given in one of the 
lovely, neglected works of the last of our great painters. 
It is a drawing of Kirkby Lonsdale churchyard, and of its 

30 brook, and valley, and hills, and folded morning sky be- 

13. Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847). A famous Scottish divine. 
28. Last of our great painters. J. M. W. Turner. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 



55 



yond. And unmindful alike of these, and of the dead 
who have left these for other valleys and for other skies, 
a group of schoolboys have piled their little books upon 
a grave, to strike them off with stones. So, also, we play 
with the words of the dead that would teach us, and 5 
strike them far from us with our bitter, reckless will ; 
little thinking that those leaves which the wind scatters 
had been piled, not only upon a gravestone, but upon the 
seal of an enchanted vault— nay, the gate of a great city 
of sleeping kings, who would awake for us, and walk with 10 
us, if we knew but how to call them by their names. 
How often, even if we lift the marble entrance gate, do we 
but wander among those old kings in their repose, and 
finger the robes they lie in, and stir the crowns on their 
foreheads, and still they are silent to us, and seem but a 15 
dusty imagery ; because we know not the incantation of 
the heart that would wake them; — which, if they once 
heard, they would start up to meet us in their power of 
long ago, narrowly to look upon us, and consider us ; and, 
as the fallen kings of Hades meet the newly fallen, saying, 20 
" Art thou also become weak as we — art thou also become 
one 01 us ? " so would these kings, with their undimmed, 
unshaken diadems, meet us, saying, " Art thou also become 
pure and mighty of heart as we ? art thou also become 
one of us ? " 25 

42. Mighty of heart, mighty of mind — " magnanimous" 
— to be this, is indeed to be great in life ; to become this 
increasingly, is,- indeed, to " advance in life," — in life itself 
— not in the trappings of it. My friends, do you remem- 
ber that old Scythian custom, when the head of a house 30 
died ? How he was dressed in his finest dress, and set in 
his chariot, and carried about to his friends' houses ; and 



56 SESAME AND LILIES 

each of them placed him at his table's head, and all 
feasted in his presence ? Suppose it were offered, to you 
in plain words, as it is offered to you in dire facts, that 
you should gain this Scythian honor, gradually, while you 
5 yet thought yourself alive. Suppose the offer were this : 
You shall die slowly ; your blood shall daily grow cold, 
your flesh petrify, your heart beat at last only as a rusted 
group of iron valves. Your life shall fade from you, and 
sink through the earth into the ice of Caina ; but, day by 

10 day, your body shall be dressed more gayly, and set in 
higher chariots, and have more orders on its breast — 
crowns on its head, if you will. Men shall bow before it, 
stare and shout round it, crowd after it up and down the' 
streets ; build palaces for it, feast with it at their tables' 

15 heads all the night long; your soul shall stay enough 
within it to know what they do, and feel the weight of the 
golden dress on its shoulders, and the furrow of the crown- 
edge on the skull ; — no more. Would you take the offer, 
verbally made by the death-angel ? Would the meanest 

20 among us take it, think you ? Yet practically and verily 
we grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure ; many of us 
grasp at it in its fulness of horror. Every man accepts 
it, who desires to advance in life without knowing what 
life is ; who means only that he is to get more horses, and 

25 more footmen, and more fortune, and more public honor, 
and — not more personal soul. He only is advancing in 
life, whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, 
whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into Living * 
peace. And the men who have this life in them are the 

'"to Se <f)p6vr)iJ.a. row TrcevjuiaTo? £0)17 /cal eip^vrj." [Greek Testament, Rom. 
viii. 6.] 

9. Caina. The place to which murderers are doomed. Dante's Inferno. 

29. Living peace. The words are from Romans viii. 6 : "To be spiritual 
minded is life and peace." 



OF KINGS" TREASURIES 57 

true lords or kings of the earth — they, and they only All 
other kingships, so far as they are true, are only the prac- 
tical issue and expression of theirs ; if less than this, they 
are either dramatic royalties, — costly shows, set off, in- 
deed, with real jewels instead of tinsel — but still only the $, 
toys of nations ; or else, there are no royalties at all, but 
tyrannies, or the mere active and practical issue of national 
folly ; for which reason I have said of them elsewhere, 
" Visible governments are the toys of some nations, the 
diseases of others, the harness of some, the burdens of 10 
more." 

43. But I have no words for the wonder with which I 
hear Kinghood still spoken of, even among thoughtful 
men, as if governed nations were a personal property, and 
might be bought and. sold, or otherwise acquired, as 15 
sheep, of whose flesh their king was to feed, and whose 
fleece he was to gather ; as if Achilles' indignant epithet 
of base kings, "people-eating," were the constant and 
proper title of all monarchs ; and enlargement of a king's 
dominion meant the same thing as the increase of a 20 
private man's estate ! Kings who think so, however 
powerful, can no more be the true kings of the nation 
than gadflies are the kings of a horse ; they suck it, and 
may drive it wild, but ''do not guide it. They and 
their courts, and their armies are, if one could see clearly, 25 
only a large species of marsh mosquito, with bayonet 
proboscis and melodious, band-mastered trumpeting, in 
the summer air ; the twilight being, perhaps sometimes 
fairer, but hardly more wholesome, for its glittering mists 
of midge companies. The true kings, meanwhile, rule 30 
quietly, if at all, and hate ruling ; too many of them make 

17. Epithet. Iliad, Book 1, Hue 231, 



58 SESAME AND LILIES 

" il gran rifiuto" ; and if they do not, the mob, as soon as 
they are likely to become useful to it, is pretty sure to 
make its "gran rifiuto " of them. 

44. Yet the visible king may also be a true one, some 
5 day, if ever day comes when he will estimate his dominion 

by the force of it, — not the geographical boundaries. It 
matters very little whether Trent cuts you a cantel out 
here, or Rhine rounds you a castle less there. But it 
does matter to you, king of men, whether you can verily 

10 say to this man "Go," and he goeth ; and to another, 
" Come," and he cometh. Whether you can turn your 
people, as you can Trent — and where it is that you bid 
them come, and where go. It matters to you, king of 
men, whether your people hate you, and die by you, or 

15 love you, and live by you. You may measure your 
dominion by multitudes, better than by miles ; and count 
degrees of love-latitude, not from, but to, a wonderfully 
warm and infinite equator. 

45. Measure! — nay, you cannot measure. Who shall 
20 measure the difference between the power of those who 

" do and teach," and who are greatest in the kingdoms of 
earth, as of heaven — and the power of those who undo, 
and consume — whose power, at the fullest, is only the 
power of the moth and the rust ? Strange ! to think how 

25 the Moth-kings lay up treasures for the moth ; and the 
Rust-kings, who are to their people's strength as rust to 
armor, lay up treasures for the rust; and the Robber- 
kings, treasures for the robber; but how few kings have 
ever laid up treasures that needed no guarding — treasures 

30 of which, the more thieves there were, the better! 

1. " Gran rifiuto." The great refusal. " Rifiuto " in Italian means refusal, 
and abdication. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 59 

Broidered robe, only to be rent ; helm and sword, only to 
be dimmed ; jewel and gold, only to be scattered ; — there 
have been three kinds of kings who have gathered these. 
Suppose there ever should arise a Fourth order of kings, 
who had read, in some obscure writing of long ago, that S 
there was a Fourth kind of treasure, which the jewel and 
gold could not equal, neither should it be valued with 
pure gold. A web made fair in the weaving, by Athena's 
shuttle ; an armor, forged in divine fire by Vulcanian 
force ; a gold to be mined in the very sun's red heart, T ° 
where he sets over the Delphian cliffs ; — deep pictured 
tissue ; — impenetrable armor ; — potable gold ; — the three 
great Angels of Conduct, Toil, and Thought, still calling 
to us, and waiting at the posts of our doors, to lead us, 
with their winged power, and guide us, with their unerring T 5 
eyes, by the path which no fowl knoweth, and which the 
vulture's eye has not seen ! Suppose kings should ever 
arise, who heard and believed this word, and at last 
gathered and brought forth treasures of — Wisdom — for 
their people ? 20 

46. Think what an amazing business that would be ! 
How inconceivable, in the state of our present national 
wisdom ! That we should bring up our peasants to a 
book exercise instead of a bayonet exercise ! — organize, 
drill, maintain with pay, and good generalship, armies of 25 
thinkers, instead of armies of stabbers ! — find national 
amusement in reading-rooms as well as rifle-grounds ; give 
prizes for a fair shot at a fact, as well as for a leaden 

9. Athena's shuttle. The Greek goddess Athena was the patroness of the 
art of weaving. 

10. Vulcanian force. Vulcan was the god of fire and the forge. 

11. Delphian cliffs. The oracle in the temple of Apollo at Delphi was the 
most revered in Greece. In the temple was stored much of the treasure belonging 
to the Grecian States. 



60 SESAME AND LILIES 

splash on a target. What an absurd idea it seems, 
put fairly in words, that the wealth of the capitalists 
of civilized nations should ever come to support litera- 
ture instead of war ! 
5 47. Have yet patience with me, while I read you a 
single sentence out of the only book, properly to be called 
a book, that I have yet written myself, the one that will 
stand, (if anything stand,) surest and longest of all work 
of mine : — 

10 " It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in Europe 
that it is entirely capitalists' wealth which supports unjust wars. 
Just wars do not need so much money to support them ; for most of 
the men who wage such, wage them gratis; but for an unjust war, 
men's bodies and souls have both to be bought ; and the best tools 

1 5 of war for them besides, which makes such war costly to the maxi- 
mum ; not to speak of the cost of base fear, and angry suspicion, 
between nations which have not grace nor honesty enough in all 
their multitudes to buy an hour's peace of mind with ; as, at present, 
France and England, purchasing of each other ten millions sterling 

20 worth of consternation, annually (a remarkably light crop, half 
thorns and half aspen leaves, sown, reaped, and granaried 
by the ' science ' of the modern political economist, teaching covet- 
ousness instead of truth). And, all unjust war being supportable, if 
not by pillage of the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these 

2 5 loans are repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to 
have no will in the matter, the capitalists' will being the primary root 
of the war; but its real root is thecovetousness of the whole nation, 
rendering it incapable of faith, frankness, or justice, and bringing 
about, therefore, in due time, his own separate loss and punishment 

30 to each person." 

48. France and England literally, observe, buy panic of 
each other ; they pay, each of them, for ten thousand- 
thousand pounds'-worth of terror, a year. Now suppose, 
instead of buying these ten millions' worth of panic 
35 annually, they made up their minds to be at peace with 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES 61 

each other, and buy ten millions' worth of knowledge 
annually ; and that each nation spent its ten thousand- 
thousand pounds a year in founding royal libraries, royal 
art galleries, royal museums, royal gardens, and places of 
rest. Might it not be better somewhat for both French 5 
and English ? 

49. It will be long, yet, before that comes to pass. 
Nevertheless, I hope it will not be long before royal or 
national libraries will be founded in every considerable 
city, with a royal series of books in them ; the same series 10 
in every one of them, chosen books, the best in every 
kind, prepared for that national series in the most perfect 
way possible ; their text printed all on leaves of equal 
size, broad of margin, and divided into pleasant volumes, 
light in the hand, beautiful, and strong, and thorough as 15 
examples of binders' work ; and that these great libraries 
will be accessible to all clean and orderly persons at all 
times of the day and evening ; strict law being enforced 
for this cleanliness and quietness. 

50. I could shape for you other plans, for art galleries, 20 
and for natural history galleries, and for many precious — 
many, it seems to me, needful — things ; but this book plan 

is the easiest and needfullest, and would prove a consider- 
able tonic to what we call our British Constitution, which 
has fallen dropsical of late, and has an evil thirst, and evil 25 
hunger, and wants healthier feeding. You have got its 
corn laws repealed for it ; try if you cannot get corn laws es- 
tablished for it, dealing in a better bread ; — bread made of 
that old enchanted Arabian grain, the Sesame, which 

27. Corn laws. The vexatious corn laws which prohibited the importation of 
grain into England except when the price rose above a certain rate, were repealed 
in 1846. 

29. Sesame. In the story cf " Ali Babaand the Forty Thieves " in the Arabian 
Nights, entrance to the robbers' cave is gained by pronouncing the words, " Open, 
Sesame." 



62 SESAME AND LILIES 

opens doors ; — doors, not of robbers', but of Kings' 
Treasuries. 

Note to § 30. 

Respecting the increase of rent by the deaths of the poor, 
5 for evidence of which, see the preface to the Medical 
Officer's report to the Privy Council, just published, there 
are suggestions in its preface which will make some stir 
among us, I fancy, respecting which let me note these 
points following : — 

10 There are two theories on the subject of land now 
abroad, and in contention ; both false. 

The first is that, by Heavenly law, there have always 
existed, and must continue to exist, a certain number of 
hereditarily sacred persons to whom the earth, air and water 

15 of the world belong, as personal property ; of which earth, 
air, and water, these persons may, at their pleasure, permit 
or forbid, the rest of the human race to eat, to breathe, or 
to drink. This theory is not for many years longer tenable. 
The adverse theory is that a division of the land of the 

20 world among the mob of the world would immediately 
elevate the said mob into sacred personages ; that houses 
would then build themselves, and corn grow of itself ; and 
that everybody would be able to live, without doing any 
work for his living. This theory would also be found 

25 highly untenable in practice. 

It will, however, require some rough experiments and 
rougher catastrophes, before the generality of persons will 
be convinced that no law concerning anything — least of all 
concerning land, for either holding or dividing it, or renting 

30 it high, or renting it low — would be of the smallest ultimate 
use to the people, so long as the general contest for life, and 
for the means of life, remains one of mere brutal competi- 



OF KINGS' l^REASURIES 63 

tion. That contest, in an unprincipled nation, will take one 
deadly form or another, whatever laws you make against 
it. For instance, it would be an entirely wholesome law 
for England, if it could be carried, that maximum limits 
should be assigned to incomes according to classes ; and 5 
that every nobleman's income should be paid to him as a 
fixed salary or pension by the nation ; and not squeezed 
by him in variable sums, at discretion, out of the tenants 
of his land. But if you could get such a law passed to- 
morrow, and if, which would be farther necessary, you 10 
could fix the value of the assigned income by making a 
given weight of pure bread for a given sum, a twelve- 
month would not pass before another currency would have 
been tacitly established, and the power of accumulated 
wealth would have re-asserted itself in some other article, 15 
or some other imaginary sign. There is only one cure for 
public distress — and that is public education, directed to 
make men thoughtful, merciful, and just. There are, 
indeed, many laws conceivable which would gradually 
better and strengthen the national temper ; but, for the 20 
most part, they are such as the national temper must be 
much bettered before it would bear. A nation in its youth 
may be helped by laws, as a weak child by backboards, 
but when it is old it cannot that way strengthen its crooked 
spine. 25 

And besides ; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye 
one ; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question 
remains inexorable, — Who is to dig it ? Which of us, in 
brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest — 
and for what pay? Who is to do the pleasant and clean 30 
work, and for what pay ? Who is to do no work, and for 
what pay? And there are curious moral and religious 



6 4 SESAME AND LILIES 

questions Connected with these. How far is it lawful to 
suck a portion of the soul out of a great many persons, in 
order to put the abstracted psychical quantities together 
and make one very beautiful or ideal soul ? If we had to 

5 deal with mere blood instead of spirit, (and the thing 
might literally be done — as it has been done with infants 
before now) — so that it were possible by taking a certain 
quantity of blood from the arms of a given number of the 
mob, and putting it all into one person, to make a more 

io azure-blooded gentleman of him, the thing would of course 
be managed ; but secretly, I should conceive. But now, 
because it is brain and soul that we abstract, not visible 
blood, it can be done quite openly, and we live, we gentle- 
men, on delicatest prey, after the manner of weasels ; that 

15 is to say, we keep a certain number of clowns digging and 
ditching, and generally stupefied, in order that we, being 
fed gratis, may have all the thinking and feeling to our- 
selves. Yet there is a great deal to be said for this. A 
highly-bred and trained English, French, Austrian, or 

20 Italian gentleman (much more a lady), is a great produc- 
tion, — a better production than most statues ; being 
beautifully colored as well as shaved, and plus all the 
brains ; a glorious thing to look at, a wonderful thing to 
talk to ; and you cannot have it, any more than a pyramid 

25 or a church, but by sacrifice of much contributed life. 
And it is, perhaps, better to build a beautiful human 
creature than a beautiful dome or steeple — and more 
delightful to look up reverently to a creature far above 
us, than to a wall ; only the beautiful human creature will 

30 have some duties to do in return — duties of living belfry 
and rampart — of which presently. 



English Classic Series-continued. 



68 The Antigone of Sophocles. 

English Version by Thos. Franck- 
lin, D.D. 

64 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

(Selected Poems.) 

65 Robert Browning. (Selected 

Poems.) 

66 Addison's Spectator. (Selec'ns.) 

67 Scenes from George Eliot's 

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68 Matthew Arnold's Culture and 

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69 DeQuincey's Joan of Arc. 

70 Carlyle's Essay on Burns. 

71 Byron's Childe Harold's Pil- 

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72 Poe's Raven, and other Poems. 

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75 Webster's Reply to Hayne. 

76&T7 Macaulay's Lays of An- 
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79 & 80 Scott's Lady of the Lake. 

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81 & 82 Scott's Marmion. (Con- 
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83 & 84 Pope's Essay on Man. 

85 Shelley's Skylark, Adonais, and 

other Poems. 

86 Dickens's Cricket on the 

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87 Spencer's Philosophy of Style. 

88 Lamb's Essays of Elia. 

89 Cowper's Task, Book II. 

90 "Wordsworth's Selected Poems. 

91 Tennyson's The Holy Grail, and 

Sir Galahad. 

92 Addison's Cato. 

93 Irving's Westminster Abbey, 

and Christmas Sketches. 
64 & 95 Macaulay's Earl .of Chat- 
ham. Second Essay. 

96 Early English Ballads. 

97 Skelton, Wyatt, and Surrey, 

(Selected Poems.) 

98 Edwin Arnold. (Selected Poems.) 

99 Caxton and Daniel. (Selections.) 

100 Fuller and Hooker. (Selections.) 

101 Marlowe's Jew of Malta. (Con- 

densed.) 

102-103 Macaulay's Essay on Mil- 
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104-105 Macaulay's Essay on Ad- 
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106 Macaulay's Essay on Boa- 
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107 Mandeville's Travels and Wy- 

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108-109 Macaulay's Essay on Fred- 
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110-111 Milton's Samson Agonis- 
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112-113-114 Franklin's Autobiog- 
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115-116 Herodotus's Stories of 
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117 Irving' s Alhambra. 

118 Burke's Present Discontents. 

119 Burke's Speech on Concilia- 

tion with American Colonies. 

120 Macaulay's Essay on Byron. 
121-122 Motley's Peter the Great, 

123 Emerson's American Scholar. 

124 Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum. 
125-126 Longfellow's Evangeline. 

127 Andersen's Danish Fairy Tales. 

(Selected.) 

128 Tennyson's The Coming of 
Arthur, and The Passing of 
Arthur. 

129 Lowell's The Vision of Sir 

Launfal, and other Poems. 

130 Whittier's Songs of Labor, and 

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131 Words of Abraham Lincoln. 

132 Grimm's German Fairy Tales. 
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134 Arabian Nights. Aladdin, or 
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139-40 Scott's Kenilworth. (Con- 



141-42~Scott , s The Talisman. (Con- 
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143 Gods and Heroes of the North. 

144_45 Pope's Iliad of Homer. 
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146 Four Mediaeval Chroniclers. 

147 Dante's Inferno. (Condensed.) 
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150 Bow- Wow and Mew-Mew. By 
Georgiana M. Craik. 

151 The Niirnberg Stove. By Ouida. 

152 Hayne's Speech. To which 
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153 Alice's Adventures in Won- 
derland. (Condensed.) By Lewis 

Carroll. 

154-155 Defoe's Journal of the 
Plague. (Condensed.) 

156-157 More's Utopia. (Con- 
densed.) 



ADDITIONAL NUMBERS ON NEX"T PAGE. 



English Classic Series-continued. 



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163-163 Maeanlay's History of 
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164-165-166 Preseott's Conquest 
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167 Longfellow's Voices of the 

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168 Hawthorne's Wonder Book. 
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174-175 living's Tales of a Trav- 
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176 Ruskin's Of Kings' Treasuries. 

First half of Sesame and Lilies, 
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177 Raskin's Of Queens' Gardens. 

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178 TVIaeaulay's Eife of Johnson. 
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